#watching women fuck themselves makes me absolutely fucking feral

[flowing-between-space]

.

[kiefbowl]

regarding alicent being hated by neckbeards (and not to sound like some Women Are Worse Actually apologist or something cause asoiaf fanboys are the worst lmao) things are not much better with the women in the fandom. i mostly move in female dominated spaces when it comes to asoiaf and it's been shocking seeing the way they've been talking about her. literally calling her every misogynistic slur under the sun 276485 times a day. and when the actress who played young alicent alluded to romantic undertones in rhaenyra and alicents relationship they went fucking feral and jumped on her saying that if actors wanted to fuck they should do it in their own time and leave the characters out of it.

it took me so much by surprise the intensity of the hatred both for the character and ship bc i can name countless villainous characters that have big fanbases?? not to mention problematic het ships ("problematic" ranging from starting as enemies to straight up shipping male abusers or groomers or pedos with female characters). they're basically treating alicent as the devil incarnate while adoring the man who took his 15 year old niece to a brothel...it's disgusting. i

was in the fandom for a while before i read fire and blood so i got into the book with preconceived notions expecting to love daemon/rhaenyra (cause he's a fan-favourite and fans are really presenting their relationship as some great love story) and hating alicent more than any asoiaf villain by the way they were talking about her. instead i was disgusted by how a male character like daemon could have stans and couldn't get what made alicent different from basically any asoiaf and got character? cause almost everyone in that universe look to save their own skin, gain power for themselves etc etc so i didn't view her as an anomaly just your run-of-the-mill antagonist??

generally liked the changes they made in her character in the show cause she was just too evil stepmothery for my taste in the book and it fell flat but the fandom was foaming at the mouth at the thought that they made her remotely sympathetic. and every time the actors/showrunners etc mentioned that alicent is a product of the patriarchy they'd be screaming about how she's the patriarchy herself and shit like that as if women who cape for the patriarchy aren't oppressed by it? it generally feels like i've time travelled s couple of decades back with the misogynistic takes ive had to read that are widely accepted in fandom . it's disturbing cause they basically switch "feminism" on and off based on whether they like s character or not and if they don't it's free estate apparently? they hate her so much that they can't even empathise with her being married off to an old man as a teenager and enduring marital rape cause apparently that would be excusing her later actions. but they'll happily joke around about daemon murdering his wife...

sorry for ranting lmao i just really wanted to discuss the show with another radfem haha

Omg girl, the takes brewing in the hotd tag on tumblr are ATROCIOUS, I'm right there with you. A week back I got an anon about Alicent where I said she hadn't become the villain yet, but had clearly turned antagonistic toward Rhaenyra. This past episode, she has clearly stepped up her villainy, and like - what about it? Her choices and feelings are completely understandable.

It truly makes me wonder what people watch stuff and read stuff for. Like what do you get out of it? If you don't find characters compelling, what's the point? If evil characters make you hate them like it's personal, perhaps you need a bit of a reality check? These people aren't real lol

I'm also absolutely bemused how angry people are getting that the showrunners are interpreting this book and creating scenes that aren't quite what the book described, because it's the point? The book is a ""history book"" intentionally playing on unreliable sources. Every scene is going to be more fleshed out and a little different, and they're going to create visual parallels within the show. These complainers would make terrible television shows

Alicent is a tragic character, and you don't have to root for her, but I don't understand not feeling sympathy for her.

[carriagelamp]

Weirdly enough, I often find myself reading less in the summer, since I have more time than I do during the rest of the year to do other things. Also artfight has been eating up more than a bit of my free time! But here’s a collection a graphic novels I sat around on the hammock reading, and some novels I finished up...

(Everyone go read All Systems Red, holy crow guys)

A Whale of the Wild

The “sequel” to A Wolf Called Wander, though it doesn’t actually connect to the previous novel except in the stylistic/thematic sense. A Whale of the Wild is very much a standalone novel. And a pretty decent one! Personally, I think I liked Wolf more, but this one was a pleasant, informative read, with just the right amount of crushing dread sprinkled in. It’s about a young orca called Vega who is learning to become a new wayfinder for her pod but who still has a lot to learn, especially in an ocean that is becoming increasingly hostile to orcas and the other sealife that live alongside humans. When a devastating earthquake hits, Vega and her little brother find themselves separated from their family, lost in a now horrifyingly unfamiliar environment, and fighting starvation as the salmon that sustain them become more and more unreliable. It’s a desperate fight for survival as they search for food and their missing family. This book is written for a middle grade level, and does a really good job of putting the current environmental crisis into an animal’s perspective while giving the readers something to hope for.

The Adventure Zone: The Crystal Kingdom

Every July I eagerly anticipate the next Adventure Zone graphic novel. This one is for their fourth arc, The Crystal Kingdom, in which Magnus, Taako, and Merle respond to a SOS from a floating laboratory that is gradually being consumed by crystals and which threatens the entire world should it fall into the ocean. Carey Pietsch’s art continues to be absolutely fantastic, so beautifully and hilariously expressive, and this one delivers some great Merle moments, lots of Carey Fangbattle, and, of course, Kravtiz. Kravitz, my beloved…

Anyway, I obviously always recommend these. If you’ve never gotten into The Adventure Zone, I totally recommend either trying these graphic novels — or even better, just go listen to the podcast because it really is both hilarious and creates a shockingly good and heart-wrenching story by the end.

All Systems Red

I’ve seen The Murderbot Diaries on my dash occasionally, and it always looked interesting, but a friend’s recommendation finally compelled me to read the first novella of the series. And holy shit y’all. Absolutely the best book I’ve read this month, it’s amazing. Mind-blowingly good. Also, if you’re like me and want a good audiobook, it’s a nice three-hour listen, very chill!

Anyway, All Systems Red is about a Security Unit, an artificially created being that’s part-organic part-mechanical and all-company-owned-and-controlled. However, self-named “Murderbot” has managed to hack into the system that suppresses its own will, and is now coasting along, doing the least amount of work its job requires not to be noticed, while preferring to spend all its time watching the hours and hours of soap operas it has downloaded into its brain. And it’s a tolerable if somewhat dull life, until the science team that it's currently rented to is attacked and the whole mission goes pear-shaped. Suddenly Murderbot has to scramble to keep its humans alive… while its humans scramble with the realization that their “SecUnit” isn’t actually a mindless robot like they had all believed...

This story is both gripping and hilariously funny. Murderbot has such a unique voice and perspective and it’s an absolute pleasure to follow its story. I reallly need to read the next book...

Asterix and the Banquet

A classic. I was startled when I realized I hadn’t actually read this Asterix story… but hell I’m not gonna complain, it lets me read one of the originals for the first time again! In this Asterix volume, the Indomitable Gauls and the Romans end up arranging a bet — the Romans intend to keep them under siege, trapped in their village, while Asterix is confident that he can easily evade them… and will prove it by going on a tour around all of Gaul, collecting iconic foods from each region in order to return and put on a fine banquet. So we get a fantastic adventure in which Asterix and Obelix run all over the country, pursued the whole way, while making cheerful stops at the various eateries along the way. Also the first book Dogmatix shows up in! All around, a wonderful read, fun like all the best Asterix comics are.

Beauty Pop v4

A less impressive graphic novel. The first Beauty Pop is one of my guilty pleasure manga because… it really is pretty stupid but in the best possible ways. I mean, the whole thing is framed around hairstyling battles, like a shojo sports manga without the sports. It’s bonkers. Unfortunately, the series does not really manage to hold up, and it really begins to feel repetitive and dragging as it continues… as a lot of series like this do. *shrug* Unsurprising but still kinda disappointing I suppose. The building three-way romantic tension is mildly interesting if for no other reason than the main character Does Not Notice and Does Not Care about any of it, which is amusing and refreshing.

FRNCK v5

Now this series only gets better and better as it goes. This is the first book of the second arc, and somehow the danger just seems to be ramping up and up and up. The cavefamily have lost their home… as well as Léonard and Gargouille. Heartbroken, shocked, and angry, Franck is the one who ends up shouldering the blame for their presumed deaths as the others mourn. Things only get worse when Franck finds himself separated from the family, and in the territory of another tribe, this one hostile and cannibalistic...

Haikyuu v5

I continue to read this series because it continues to be charming… though it is beginning to feel, maybe, just a little repetitive. Kind of an inevitability with sports manga. But so far it continues to be good enough to overcome that. I’m not sure what I can say about this series that I haven’t already, so I’ll simply say it continues to be one of the most impressive sports manga I’ve read, and the author does a fantastic job of creating engaging characters, fleshed out teams, and really compelling relationships. I do genuinely adore all the main members of Crows, along with a number of characters from the rival teams as well. And of course it has some kickass volleyball scenes that are just drawn so dramatically they can’t help but take your breath away a little.

M*A*S*H Goes To Maine

Meh. The original book of the series was actually quite good in my opinion. This one… considerably less so. The first part I enjoyed more, since it was about Hawkeye, Trapper, Duke, and Oliver Jones trying to set up the FinestKind Clinic and Fishmarket in Crabapple Cove (which… is just the best premise I could have ever asked for). However, the book spends most of its time describing the quirky lives and times of other people living in the area and I… just… don’t care. It was funny at times but… I just don’t care. I wanted to hear more about the main cast. Also I found this book felt more racist and misogynistic than the first which also put me off :/ Wouldn’t bother if I were you. Go read the first book instead, or better yet just watch the TV show which is an obvious banger.

My Heart’s in the Highlands

I have had this on my “currently reading” list for so long but I’m officially giving up. It’s a really good book in theory but my god I can’t get over the pacing.

It’s about Lady Jane, a woman studying medicine in Edinburgh in 1888, and who suddenly finds herself back in the Highlands in the 13th century. Lost and confused, Jane is now at the mercy Clan Donald’s hospitality while she tries to adjust to this new world and hunts for her broken time machine. Fortunately, this hospitality include a burgeoning friendship with a red-haired warrior woman, Ainslie nic Dòmhnaill, who opens Jane’s eyes to the way the world could be.

Listen. It drives me nuts. This book should be completely up my alley, it has everything I like — IT HAS ALL OF ITS HISTORICAL FOOTNOTES CITED AT THE BACK, LITTLE EXTRA DETAILS ABOUT EVERY CHAPTER. THAT’S MY SHIT RIGHT THERE. DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I LIKE BEING ABLE TO GO OVER HISTORICAL DETAILS?? AND WELL RESEARCHED FOOTNOTES?? And yet it doesn’t. Fucking. Work for me. It has a kickass Scottish warrior lady as a love interest! It has a badass lady doctor! It has fish-out-of-water culture shock! But it also has a completely meandering plot, no sense of building tension, and a romance that just happens out of nowhere and feels completely unearned and uninteresting.

I would genuinely just rather read Outlander again, which I know has its own host of problems, but at least Outlander felt exciting and interesting and tense and funny. The romance built in fits and starts, it was complicated, and kept me interested. That book had me hooked (and has me hooked every time I reread it) whereas this book I’ve been sadly picking at for months like its a plate of overcooked spinach. This felt like an attempt at a queer, historically accurate knockoff which I would normally be super into but which just could not stick the landing.

Moomin on the Riviera

My first time actually reading anything from the Moomin canon. I have zero idea how to feel about it! It certainly is as feral as I’ve heard described! Overall, I think I enjoyed it but it sure made me feel strange emotions I didn’t know existed. I’m not even going to try to describe it. Read it if you want a batshit insane anti-capitalist comic.

Surviving the City

This was good in some areas, less good in others. It had a very interesting indigenous perspective on life in the modern city, the foster system, and The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women issue, which I’ve never seen handled in a book before. Something about the pacing did not completely click with me and I found myself getting easily distracted, but it’s definitely worth the read just to experience it and look at the issues it deals with through the characters’ (and author’s) eyes. It did give me a lot to think about and wrestle with, which is sometimes the best thing a book can give you.

Torchwood: Pack Animals

A really fun read, more so than I had ever expected! If you like Torchwood and want more stories about the team before everything goes to shit, this is perfect for that. It includes the entire cast, an interest mystery to be unravelled, lots of slavering monsters, Rhys being really wonderful and sweet (which I didn’t know I wanted until I read this book), and all the humour I expect from Torchwood. I had to send a lot of quotes to my long-suffering girlfriend who a) does not watch this show but b) needs to tolerate it because I find it too funny to keep to myself. It was good enough to make me go out another book of the series since this was the only one my library carried.

[bao3bei4]

kpop music videos that gave their fans sexual brainworms

OR accidental fetish pop and its fringe fanbase: meditations on gendered desire 

large warning here: i am someone who has been into kpop for the past 10 years. however, i have always been an extremely casual fan. i do write fic, but not rpf. if any of that makes you not want to hear me talk about kpop rpf (or you don’t want to hear about it in general), please keep moving.

anyway, obviously pop is corporate, soulless, and manufactured. but sometimes some truly bizarre shit gets past the committees and destroys a generation. these are their stories.

the video that started this is all is got7’s just right, released july 10th, 2015.

yes that’s all 7 members of got7 (one is out of frame) shrunken down for your viewing pleasure. they live in your room and tell you you’re just right. 

this sheer fetish power of this video is nerfed only by how utterly sexless it is.

they’re styled like and dance like this. it’s a totally unironic sendup of the seminal work that preceded it by four years, “what makes you beautiful” by the white kpop group “one direction.” the chaste energy of the whole thing makes you legitimately wonder if the good people at jyp have just never heard of microphilia. (during a dramatic reading of this piece, here a friend interjected seriously, “i think it’s korean culture not to talk about things like this, fetishes in the workplace.”)

it’s for the best, honestly, though because the actress in the music video is lee ja in, who was 11 when the video was shot. considering that the members themselves ranged in age from 18-23 at the time, i think it’s actually very impressive that we only have to cancel one. 

you receive absolutely no prizes for guessing that it’s jackson wang we’re sending to social justice prison. why’d he do this? no one asked. 

at any rate, got7 fans, or “gans” (they actually call themselves igot7s which is too twee for me), have much to think about here: all 7 very small members of got7 sneaking into their room, possibly weird age play, and jackson wang eating a very large cake.

let’s see what they actually did. 

twitter was actually very tame. the most charged thing i found was (unsurprisingly) from a bts fan (“ban”). i don’t actually know what it means, but i think it means something.

so, of course, i turned to the internet’s last bastion of free speech, where you can say whatever the fuck you want and receive cheers, or as the kids say, “kudos.” that is, i read fanfiction. 

for those of you who don’t know your herstory, i started my journey at Asianfanfics.com, where, at the time of writing, there were 12,067 got7 stories. i want to start this by saying that i think feminism won, because someone was paying real human dollars to advertise their irene/wendy fanfiction on a banner ad, which is quite possibly a win for women for everywhere. 

anyway, Asianfanfics.com’s search engine sucks ass (i kept on finding stories about different combinations of bts members worrying about their weight and being reassured by another member that were entitled “just right”), so i decided to look through all got7 stories written between july 2015 and december 2015. 

but, alas, not a single got7 microphilia fic to be found. 

also, some genre commentary while i’m here: i think the stories i respect the most are the “[y/n] is a ordinary girl who’s assigned to be got7’s manager! can she make them into superstars? as sparks begin to fly, can she keep it professional?” like fuck yeah that sounds like a kickass dating sim. it almost definitely already is one. i salute all the teens around the world for buying into the fantasy of dating a boy band member that they themselves sell you. 

however, i don’t think i respect the “[member a] and [member b] are mafia/jocks and nerds/college students/high schoolers” concepts. in my opinion, the whole fantasy of boy band member is their personas, their hidden real personalities, their celebrity, and the show business setting. find a different intellectual property if you wanna write about school. i even respect the “yugyeom drank girl juice [not estrogen] and turned into a sexy girl” story more, because at least it knows exactly what it wants, and also because they’re all still boy band members. well, band members. shout out to yugyeom. 

so, anyway, i looked elsewhere. at the time of writing, archive of our own only had 11,645 got7 stories, but it does have a better search, so it effectively has more. as an aside, i think it’s so funny, and mildly disorienting at first, that archive of our own separates the “music & bands” section from the “celebrities & real people” section. boy band members aren’t real people. 

the first problem i encountered is that only 20 or so stories were written within a year of just right’s release. absolute cringe gans. don’t you care about your boys? there were zero stories tagged “vore” or “microphilia” either. stories containing the word “tiny” that were rated either “explicit” or “mature” were all normal (“normal”) size fetishization rather than, you know, just right. 

however, i learned my lesson from twitter. i realized that what had happened was that watching this video had created sleeper agents, just waiting for their activation phrase. that activation phrase? bangtan boys. and yeah, lo and behold, there was one! unfortunately (fortunately?) it had nothing to do with got7, let alone just right, so i’m not going to talk about it.  

basically what i learned is that this video may have actually been very normal, and my brain has just been destroyed by being too online at a young age. 

however, there are plenty more videos in this genre. i present to you exo wolf, a banger from may 30th, 2013. i say banger, because in a comedic inversion, it’s actually fucking terrible. 

this video is pretty self-explanatory in terms of why it might induce certain responses. 

let’s get the formalities out of the way. this video, the member who’s getting cancelled is kai. he has braids in this video :/

also skating on thin ice: xiumin and chen. guys what was up with the whole exo-m thing? like, we’re gonna have a cpop subgroup, but it’s going to be part chinese members and part korean members that we’ll give a chinese name? unsurprisingly, the three exo members who have departed from the group are all chinese. they weren’t able to stand the microaggressions probably. but xiumin and chen remain uncancelled as an official chinese apology for five thousand of years of on-and-off invasions of korea. sorry guys that was kinda fucked up. our bad! 

anyway, there are basically three avenues for exo fans to take: 1) humans with wolfish characters (usually wolf pack dynamics, which even wolves themselves don’t fucking use so i think all of you should shut up. the real omega here is your brain), 2) werewolves (duh), and 3) wolves with human characteristics (i.e. standard furry fare). 

exo themselves let all these possibilities exist at the same time, superimposing them over each other, which is very woke and egalitarian of them. let’s see what the people decided. awoo.

Asianfanfics dot com had many stories in this vein. i feel very validated that this time i was able to correctly predict a fetish. that said, briefly returning to my earlier comment regarding alternate universes: it’s intense psychic whiplash reading about these vampires and werewolves, and going okay okay luhan is a vampire this that whatever, and then seeing the actual real performance photos the author attaches at the bottom of each chapter. bro i forgot these were actual people.... it breaks immersion so bad... i’m sorry, i just can’t believe that any of these dancing boys are having weird vampire sex with wings or whatever. 

archive of our own also had many stories in this vein. and i think there are some important difference between the two sites worth talking about. 

first of all, i think the higher engagement rate of archive of our own really enables some of the authors to get super bold. it makes Asianfanfics.com seem a little quaint, actually. like the wordcounts are waaay longer, for one. it’s uncommon for a story hosted on Asianfanfics.com to be more than a few thousand words long (most of them could easily be published in the new yorker), whereas some of these archive of our own people have written full length novels about if the members of exo were werewolves. i guess it’s just intensely demoralizing for the aff.com crew to get, like, three comments per story. 

the second big difference is that i’m noticing more common themes between the ao3 crew’s writing. like stan intertextuality, or plagiarism, or whatever, but they seem to be implicitly engaging with each other’s characterizations, storylines, and tropes. i think it is because they probably all follow each other on twitter. (i have been active on twitter for three weeks now so i am an expert on fanfiction twitter.) 

anyway, like not that i am a particularly big gan (cannot even list all the members), but these people seem to have reached a very specific consensus on how jackson wang, for instance, would react in a variety of situations that really surprises me? if i were to sit down and write a got7 story, i think the fuckboitude, the douchebaggery is a big part of his charm. not to be nationalist or anything, but for god’s sake, he’s from hong kong. but these people have him as very sensitive, lots of protective instincts. not that i understood what anyone on aff.com was doing with his character either, but they did all seem to be doing different things. “kudos” to that, i guess.

but: exo. wolf. i searched the “wolves” tag. this filtered the list down from 33459 stories to 52 stories. and the “wolves” tag was very different from the aff.com “wolf” tag. for the most part, aff.com liked stories where a member was a wolf (usually shapeshifting), feral boy, lots of y/n, lots of y/n dating a feral boy who is secretly a wolf. 

ao3 really, really, really likes alpha/beta/omega stories. sorting by the most popular stories, only five on the first page weren’t a/b/o. and one of them was a cis f!baekhyun story, so i think the intended effect was communicated. anyway, let’s talk about some of the themes. 

first of all, i’m disappointed. today’s bonus cancellation is of ao3 “wolves” writers. why the fuck are you drawing so heavily from european wolves?? there are wolves in asia!! you don’t need to keep giving their packs and ranks weird latin names. i will kill you. i hate italy. korea literally has a native wolf. i hate all of you!!! if you want to write caucasian wolves go watch that dumbass cw show!!!! my god. 

the second theme (the first one was white supremacy) is that no one wants to be a wolf who fucks. i think that we need a sex positivity movement, or something, for omega rights. like, are all of you doing okay? you’re queering misogyny by inventing new genders to oppress. another level to “no one wants to be a wolf...” is the “who fucks” part. there are so many consent issues. and not even in like, a sexy intentional way? in a “i genuinely do not think this author understands how their writing comes off” way. unfortunately i am sensitive to untagged sexual coercion, and there was a lot of that.

at any rate, the aff.com wolves were at peace with being wolves, very self-actualized. the ao3 wolves know that every minute they spend alive on this bitch of an earth is suffering, and also sex.

the third theme is the evolution of y/n. y/n, who, in a startlingly woke move for aff.com, is almost always korean, is a girl main character stumbling into love, boy bands, and wolves (i think it’s because aff.com is oldschool kpop fandom, so therefore heavily asian itself in userbase). but y/n is not the main character in ao3 stories. she is the straight best friend. in what i think is a hilarious move, ao3 authors invert the gay best friend paradigm to give the gay main character a straight girl as best friend. she usually calls him “a gay,” she has lots of thoughts on boys, and she knows his sexuality better than he does and before he does. (sidebar: if all the men are gay, and all the women are straight...)

there’s a really fun twist to this, though, because the main character is always a self-insert in fanfiction. but where older fanfiction like aff.com was at peace with this and literalize it via y/n shenanigans, modern fic writers who haven’t finished distangling their complicated relationship with wanting to be a man who loves other men instead simply imbue their main character with their essence. a little voodoo doll sehun, with a lock of y/n hair. 

this creates a deeply ambivalent relationship with gender in these stories. the main character is usually an omega, but one who resents being an omega. their body and its parts is usually described, if at all, as ostensibly intersex (except more offensively), but in practice, these discourses inscribe a trans body. (nb: i think cis writers approach this in a really fucked up fetishizing way, but i hope by this point we know that that goes without saying) it’s incredibly straightforward to read this, and see the underlying desires and fears in a heady cocktail of unfiltered writing that’s deeply confessional. you know when freud had people say whatever the fuck they wanted and figured they’d eventually free associate into releasing their subconscious into reality? yeah. 

okay, and while we’re on the topic, let’s talk f(x) nu abo, released on may 4th, 2010. 

this is a blitzy, maximalist, amped up dance hit that even has its own applause and cheers built in. it’s so fucking annoying, and i love it. 

this song is on here because the second most popular kpop a/b/o story on ao3 is called “nu abo” except it’s about bts. that’s offensive enough in its own right. write something about f(x) (702 works). when will women win the right to have their own self-lubricating holes.

anyway, even though f(x) is probably innocent in all of this, i’m still cancelling amber liu. 

for queerbaiting. who told her to look like ruby rose but hot? and for what? i’m also cancelling her for racism, but that wasn’t in this video. 

moving on to a double feature: vixx voodoo doll and vixx chained up, released november 19, 2013 and november 9, 2015 respectively. this is because while voodoo doll is more formative, i think the fans who write fanfiction today got into kpop more recently, so we are casting a wide net.

anyway, voodoo doll is jam packed with weird pseudo-medical imagery, blood, vivisection, bondage, puppet shit, femdom, sharps, piercings, asphyxiation, dollification, stabbing/penetration metaphors, and a really sick and catchy dance. god that looks like the list of tags on the a/b/o wolf stories. 

for this song, we’re cancelling you, for being way too into this song when you were 13.

vixx voodoo doll made me goth i guess! insert that pic of the your music saved me sign, except it saved me from getting into emo or pop punk probably. 

chained up, comparatively, is much more tame. the only thing of note about it is that there are around 10 completely different chokers and choker looks the members wear in this music video. also they’re singing about being chained up, but that seemed a bit obvious. 

we could argue that voodoo doll is gay while chained up is gay (derogatory); that voodoo doll is queer while chained up is gay; that chained up is a sensitive masterpiece of omega4omega sexuality. but we’re not going to. 

we’re going to talk about what voodoo doll fanfiction was and was not. first, Aff.com had plenty of it. however, i was extremely disappointed to see that much of it did not hew to the spirit of vixx voodoo doll. my god, the voodoo doll becoming the one preying upon you disgusts me. the fantasy of the voodoo doll is that of absolute power. the idea that the doll itself has agency? instantly breaks the fantasy. i’m even not into voodoo dolls and i’m offended. 

i also don’t think it’s part of the voodoo doll fantasy to release the doll. the only story on there that involved Y/N kidnapping vixx members like in the music video was unavailable because the author deactivated their account. come back qxeen what did you see. 

i think this got off track, actually, in that i was mostly wondering why these people imprinted differently onto vixx voodoo doll than i did. like i don’t think you’re supposed to actually like straightforwardly absorb the morals and aesthetics of music videos like it’s propaganda. however, it’s more entertaining if you do. i hope ao3 doesn’t let me down. 

out of the then 5932 works in the vixx fandom (the least out of every group so far, excluding f(x) because they’re women), 59 of them included the word “voodoo” somewhere. that’s 1%. i legitimately can’t tell if that’s high or not. 

after some more cursory reading through the first page of popular results, my big takeaway is that people watched that video and wanted to be tortured and enslaved? but not, like, in a sexy way where the torturing is the point, the way where the point is to suffer bravely and beautifully, to endure the world’s harms like jesus on the cross, and then to fall into the arms of a beautiful boy who may or may not be the one hurting you in the first place. 

there’s a certain predictability to these fantasies. like it’s not even masochism, which would be fun at least, it’s literally just like the desire to be beautiful, even as you suffer. and i do find that a little boring. (but, i mean, you can’t help being a woman!)

sidebar: on chained up. what’s interesting about chained up, is that most of the then 38 “chained up” works (likely because the video has no storyline) are about the members fucking during chained up promotions. no one’s ever actually chained up, but whatever. it’s fine. it’s fine! 

anyway, here, more than ever, the nature of desire is stripped bare. i’ve written before [elsewhere in the unreleased tshirt cinematic universe] on how kpop boys are, through fandom, re-formed as white, or more strongly, i guess, blank slates. it’s really interesting to me how so much of this dynamic of projection is enabled by the fact that they’re asian men. they’re infantilized, feminized vessels; they’re seductive, but childlike, oblivious to their own charms, so nonthreatening; they have uncontrollable desires for sex, they’re scared of sex. and above all else, white women submit themselves to them, insert themselves into them. basically kpop fans tend to rework old school yellow peril and emasculation fantasies to reenact their own desires, often white, often cishet on them. 

what i am saying is that there’s another thesis about forced feminization and its racialized subtext in here. obviously gender is a racialized construct to begin with, but like it’s fascinating to argue that when white women remake asian men according to their own desires, that is, into themselves, they (hopefully) unintentionally echo these old fears about the sexual order.

it illuminates, it seems, the underlying dynamic in the denigration of asian men, which is of course the fear of miscegenation. now, my breathtaking ability to make everything about me aside, miscegenation is interesting because it presents a racial synthesis, beginning to collapse and trouble the artificial designations of purity. so we make asian men into white women, and end up with an unsettling hybrid. i’m sure this has deep implications for me personally.

but i think we already knew that quite a few of these people had yellow fever, so let’s talk about the gender dialectic at play. basically, the above dynamic, of making men into women (whether literally, in body; or subjectively, in mind; or even relationally, as they are objectified into passive vessels for your desire) coexists with the ostensibly converse dynamic, in which the straight women desires to be a gay man. these aren’t necessarily in conflict: it could easily be that these are different writers writing different stories, that both are ways of expressing discontent with existing in a raced, gendered body, or even that the end product of both is the same.

it’s been a while without a picture. all of you now have the legal right to hunt and kill me for making a d&g joke.

anyway, what i want to talk about is how these two fantasies can coexist. that by making a man into yourself, you can speak on your own desire in a passive way. my normal interest is analyzing forced masc fantasies (albeit in chinese opera lol), and they bear little to no resemblance to this kind of fantasy. this kind offers plausible deniability, of course, because wanting things is embarrassing. but also the fantasy isn’t about wanting to be a man, it’s about having no choice but to be a failed one. the gender pessimism running through these stories is palpable. basically andrea long chu wants what wolf fanfiction writers know: everyone is an omega, and everyone hates it.

at any rate, this racialized dynamic is one that i wasn’t sure how to bring up throughout this piece, mainly because there is no definitive way for me to tell the race of any individual writer, beyond just like the clear and present vibes that i receive. but i think it structures a lot of the fantasies contained in this essay. (i felt more comfortable bringing up the gendered dynamic, because it was fairly trivial to find out the current gender of the person writing each story i was reading.) 

obviously we should return to the specter haunting this conversation: the very much alive david eng. i think this sort of argument is familiar to readers of racial castration, especially his chapter on m. butterfly. btw sorry for mentioning that play 2 out of 3 posts on this blog. i have problems.

let’s talk about the parallel imagery between the depiction of gallimard’s final speech and the fanfiction i’ve described above. in it, gallimard makes himself into his own dream woman, dressing in yellowface and robes, the costume of puccini’s original madame butterfly. and he laments his lost love:

there is a vision of the orient that i have. of slender women in chong sams and kimonos who die for the love of unworthy foreign devils. who are born and raised to be the perfect women. who take whatever punishment we give them, and bounce back, strengthened by love, unconditionally.

in that, i see the self insert, and i see the sufferer of vixx voodoo fic. the fantasy that gallimard has about asian women is repeated, this time about asian men and a helpless identification with them. and on some level, gallimard’s women do have something very compelling to identify with: they suggest that there’s a way to endure white male violence without sacrifice, and even more potently, to enjoy it on some level.

but onward to the titular racial castration. eng argues that gallimard’s wilful ignorance of song’s true gender is a psychic castration -- song’s masculinity is diminished so that his own can be enhanced within their relationship. this, eng believes, acts out “richard fung’s contention that in western imaginary ‘asian and anus are conflated.’” this process stabilizes the relationship between the asian man and the white woman: they occupy the same place within the sexual dyad. 

this is, i think, why some people are addicted to writing from the bottom’s perspective. again -- not implying that irl bottoms don’t exist or that bottoms are psychically castrated lol -- but rather that you can fantasize about this ideal asian man that you can come to embody. in kpop rpf, rather than it being between a white man and an asian man (unless someone’s started writing chad future fic), it’s between two asian men. so this transformation is performed. whiteness is always intruding and so i think eng is helpful here to making it visible again. 

this essay isn’t a callout or actual cancellation or anything like that, i do wanna be clear. i guess i just like talking about fantasies, even the embarrassing ones, and where they come from. i think oftentimes in fandom spaces, we write a lot of stories off as idfic, and i think virtually every single one of the stories i referenced to write this fairly uncontroversially fall into that category. but i think calling something an “id” something or the other naturalizes the satisfaction it gives as purely instinctual and unconscious, when i do think there are deeper narratives at play. while i didn’t ever actually reference the base here (sorry), i do think it’s worth talking about how real world power shapes & maintains the superstructure, and thereby our fantasies. 

anyway in conclusion, maybe i was the one with sexual brainworms the whole time.

[shenanigans-and-imagines]

Sooooo NSFW alphabet (as a whole) for our dear clone boys? Wolffe or Cody...u decide ❤ thank u

A/N: I decided to go with Wolffe on this one because, I like Wolffe.  Also, I think I’ve got a better grasp on his character. And, just as a reminder REBLOG AND COMMENT IF YOU LIKE THIS!!! Likes mean nothing on this site and the tags hate me personally.

A = Aftercare (what they’re like after sex)

Panting, sweating, and holding you close.  He seriously loves nothing more than pulling you against him as he presses soft kisses all over your skin.  You practically have to bribe him to let you go long enough to wash up after.

B = Body part (their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

He loves your ass.  There’s no getting around it.  He loves the way it feels in his hand.  He loves the sound you make when he squeezes it.  And most of all, he hates to see you leave, but he loves to watch you go.

For himself, Wolffe is pretty proud of his chest.  He loves the feel of your hands on him.  He knows you watch him when he’s training with his brothers.  And you’ve made it your mission in life to kiss an admire every scar on it.  How could he not appreciate your efforts?

C = Cum (anything to do with cum, basically)

It’s a tie if he prefers cumming in your mouth or in your cunt more.  Either way, cumming inside you is the best feeling in the world for him.  It’s like he’s proving to himself that you’re his.  It’s his cum inside you, nobody else, and you’re letting him.

D = Dirty secret (pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

He still has your panties from the first night you had sex.  He’s not proud of it, but when he’s been away from too long, he likes to hold the lace as he jerks off.  He would never tell you.

E = Experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)

Let’s go with limited before he meets you. Obviously none of the clones even see any sort of potential sexual partner until after their training is over, and after then it’s kind of few and far between.  Wolffe has had a couple of one night stands with some women who have come into 79′s, but that’s about it.

F = Favorite position (this goes without saying)

Doggy style.  Cliche? Yes. But true. He loves having a perfect view of your ass as he cock slides in and out of you, coated with you slick.  He loves the control it gives him.  But he especially loves covering you with his body and bite into your shoulder as you both cum.

G = Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)

Not really.  He can be a little cheeky at times as he teases you, but most of the time it’s fast, rough, and completely erotic.

H = Hair (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)

He keeps it pretty trim down below.  He knows you’re not a fan of a mouth full of pubic hair when you suck him off.  The least he can do is keep your comfort to a minimum.

I = Intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)

In the moment it’s like he wants to absorb your body into his. Even when he’s taking you from behind, he grabbing and pulling and kissing your skin like it’s the only thing keeping him alive.  So, romantic? Maybe not.  Intimate? Yes.

J = Jack off (masturbation headcanon)

He’s away a lot and every now and again needs to let off some steam.  He shares his bunk with his brothers, so getting off there without leaving some evidences is a trick.  Most of the time he waits until late at night on the ship and slips into the showers when nobody is around.  It’s then a matter of turning on the warm water and picturing you’re in there with him.  He’s gotten off plenty of times to the thought of your lips wrapped around his cock as the water pours down both your bodies.

K = Kink (one or more of their kinks)

Praise kink. We know Wolffe has his own reservations about being a clone.  While he’s gotten better, the idea that he’s one of literally millions ways on him at times.  So to have you call his name, praise his fingers, his cock, his lips and know that he’s the one making you see stars is everything to him.

Also totally a Dom.  Not full blown latex and whips, but he does like the idea of tying you up and letting him do what he wants to your body.

L = Location (favorite places to do the do)

His favorite place is your apartment on Coruscant.  If he’s at your apartment, good chance you’re both on leave so the probability of being call away or interrupted are slim to none.  He once kept you in that apartment for three days straight after not seeing you in months.  All you did was fuck, eat, sleep and fuck again for almost 72 hours.

M = Motivation (what turns them on, gets them going)

Honestly, just you whispering into his ear and telling him you’re horny is enough to get him going.  You add and kiss and a small bite on his neck and he’s ready to take you against the nearest wall.  You’re own assertiveness combined with the fact you want him to be the one to take care of you is all he needs.

N = No (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

You humiliating him.  Seriously, degrading him or hitting him or anything like that just gets him frustrated and upset.

O = Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)

He man loves a good blow job. I wasn’t kidding when I said it’s a toss up for him between cumming down your throat or in your pussy.  The sight of you on your knees with your lips wrapped around his cock has gotten him through plenty of lonely nights.

That all being said, he’s excellent at giving.  Although, he almost exclusively uses it as a form of torture.  There was one memorable night when he tied your hands to the headboard and decided to see how many times he could make you cum with just his tongue and fingers.

P = Pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)

Most of the time it’s rough borderline feral sex.  Lots of hair pulling, biting, bruised hips and a couple of broken headboards.  If you’re both not panting like you just ran a marathon he considers it a slow night.

Q = Quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)

On the rare occasion you’re working along side each other, quickies are definitely a thing. He never has a quickie while on duty, but he knows there is no way you guys can get enough privacy to had a full sessions.  So, the solution is quickies in empty shower rooms, abandoned tech rooms, and even once an empty med bay.  He’s not sure when he’s going to see you again and doesn’t want to waste the opportunity

R = Risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.)

Wolffe really is up for anything, so long as you talk to him before hand.  He wants to makes sure you’re comfortable and safe with whatever you guys try out.

S = Stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)

His stamina is actually pretty impressive.  You’re not sure if it’s just pent up energy since you guys so rarely get to see each other in person or if he’s just like that.  Either way, he can go three rounds on an average night.  They fluctuate in terms of time depending on how much foreplay is in between sessions, but it’s enough to leave you both exhausted and spent by the end of it.

T = Toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)

Wolffe doesn’t really have any toys for himself.  The mocking he would get from his brothers if they ever found it is enough for him not to risk it.  But, you do have a nice collection of toys in your apartment the pair of you like to bring out every now and again.

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

He is such a tease.  There is just something about you tied to the bed, bucking your hips as you try to fuck yourself on his fingers begging for him to let you cum that is oh so satisfying.

V = Volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)

He certainly is loud.  Add that to another reason why your apartment is the best place to have sex.  He grunt and groan and whispers dirty things in your ear only to get louder and more wild the closer he is to cumming.

W = Wild card (a random headcanon for the character)

Absolutely none of his brothers really realize how bad he has it for you.  Wolffe more than almost any other clone knows how to divide his private life from his personal life.  Even if you work together and go off to random corners of the ship for a quick one, literally nobody catches on.  The man has the best poker face in the GAR and you can quote me on that.

X = X-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)

I’m convinced all the clones are hung and you can quote me on that.  An eight inch thick dick, the lot of them.

Y = Yearning (how high is their sex drive?)

Pretty high, which surprises everyone besides you.  Every chance he has to touch you, he does.  You wonder if it will cool down once the war is over because there’s no chance any time soon.

Z = Zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

He’s out pretty soon after you finally call it a night.  Grant you are too, but he’s out like a light.  Nothing short of a bombing is going to get him up.

[crimeronan]

no supernatural au concept i haven’t been able to stop thinking about since considering ronan and opal were once the same age

the lynch family has a reputation.  partly it’s because they’re fucking weird, but let’s be real -- every rural town has its share of characters.  weird farmers are par for the course.  if the lynch family just kept to themselves at the barns, no one would know they existed.  however niall lynch is a swaggering larger-than-life storybook hero who loves attention and scandal, so: the lynch family has a reputation

by and large, the household is made up of known entities.  niall, the irishman who never shuts the fuck up.  aurora, the quiet beautiful wife with the bizarrely gorgeous beadwork at craft fairs. declan, the eldest son who’s got one foot in DC and won’t ever look back when he gets there.  matthew, the youngest boy with the enthusiasm and adoration and intellectual prowess of a golden retriever puppy

however.  the lynch twins are largely folkloric

it’s not just that they never seem to appear in public.  it’s that there are a dozen decade-old stories told by knitting folks on their porches that cannot POSSIBLY all be true, including:

the lynch twins set fire to the post office

the lynch twins stole four pallets of soda from the back of a truck unloading at the henrietta general store and drank all the evidence

the lynch twins lured a man into the woods and stabbed him in the leg

the lynch twins helped the local vet’s office coordinate 30 TNR procedures because they’ve befriended a colony of feral cats

the lynch twins trained a rotating cast of corvids to shit on the mayor when he leaves his office every evening

the lynch twins were banned from three local churches after incidents involving a statue of mary, stained glass worth several thousand dollars, and the preacher’s microphone respectively

adam doesn’t give much of a shit about local gossip but has gleaned quite a bit of it when being deferential and polite to middle-aged women at the dollar store.  it takes him a month of attending aglionby to put together that ronan and declan are siblings (they look unbelievably alike, but their body language and speech are SO different) and another week after that to realize ronan’s one-half of the unidentified lynch family variables

“isn’t there another one of him?” adam blurts

declan looks up and blinks, nonplussed rather than smooth for once in his life.  “excuse me?”

adam’s eating lunch and has ended up at a table with declan not because of friendliness, but because declan’s taking a break from his roving cast of intransient social interactions to work on college apps and adam’s getting a head start on homework.  neither is here to make friends.  adam nods across the room at ronan, who appears to be constructing a fully landscaped mountain sculpture out of french fries

declan says “god, i wish” as ronan upends a bottle of ketchup over the fries and causes a volcanic eruption that obliterates everything in the lunch table’s path

that tells adam absolutely nothing but also he doesn’t really care.  later, when he and gansey are friends, and he’s no closer to understanding ronan but much more actively annoyed by him, he asks gansey the same thing

“oh, his sister!” gansey says, and beams.  this at least explains why she doesn’t go to aglionby.  “she’s great.  she’s taught me a lot about what plants want to kill you”

adam can’t decide what to make of this.  once upon a time he’d think that the affection of someone like gansey predisposed the mysterious lynch sister toward being like declan, but it turns out gansey reserves that ebullient expression for losers like him and ronan and noah alone, so.  more data necessary

it’s important to note that this isn’t like, occupying a huge part of adam’s mind.  it’s just idle querying because he likes knowing things.  to that end, he asks ronan once if he’d ever met ronan’s sister when adam attended the public junior high.  they’d be in the same grade, right??

ronan gets weird and evasive with some response about how she homeschools with his mom, and adam’s like okay, some religious cult thing with the women running the farm. whatever. not my issue

adam and ronan get slowly closer over time, etcetc, you know how it goes.  eventually adam's invited to the barns.  his first few visits are normal.  suspiciously normal.  aurora is loving and gentle in a way that makes adam skittish - probably more due to his own issues than any Actual malevolence, but who knows - and there is zero mention or sign of a girl living there

it doesn’t Really bother adam, but it kind of bothers him.  less because he’s dying to meet her and more because equations that don’t add up make him nervous.  his running list of theories include 1) she doesn’t exist 2) she’s dead 3) she’s at some elite boarding school for girls in connecticut 4) she’s an emancipated minor 5) she’s not an emancipated minor but has run away anyway 6) she’s a fugitive from justice 7) she’s in prison 8) she’s dead but, like, worse this time

adam carefully and subtly raises his concerns to ronan by asking, “so is your sister being tortured in your attic or what?”

ronan, reasonably, is like, “the fuck?”

adam’s like, “look, all i’m saying is that when a twin goes missing in a story and no one seems to care, something sinister’s afoot.  that’s all i’m saying here.”

ronan’s like, “say the word ‘afoot’ again.  you sound like gansey.  come on”

he takes adam out for a walk in the woods, which seems like a pretty murdery way to respond.  adam, uncomfortably aware of that rumor about luring people to the woods and stabbing them in the leg, is like okay i’m about to die here.  i’ve uncovered a lifetime movie plot and now i’m gonna be buried in unmarked barrel #457.  what a way to go

this is pretty much confirmed when he gets attacked

he hits the ground before he’s really registered anything beyond a surprise impact.  it drives the breath out of his lungs. he flips onto his back right away.  ronan’s got half a foot of height on him and stupidly long legs so a sprinting escape doesn’t seem viable.  he’s gonna have to rely on the old-fashioned power of fingernails and kicking

he has time to see a pair of blown-pupil eyes WAY too close to his face before the weight disappears from him.  the culprit is a girl, late teens, with hair that’s probably blonder when the matted dirt is washed out of it.  “for fuck’s fucking sake,” ronan is saying, hauling her to her feet and blessedly away from adam’s vulnerable internal organs, “why. WHY.”

“holy shit.”  adam sits up, clutching his chest.  he can feel every bone in his body.  “god. god. god”

the girl is almost as tall as ronan.  she’s dressed in some kind of baggy coverall-ish getup that might once have been an army parachute.  she is not wearing any shoes.  there’s some blood on her face from a recently-opened scab, and also a black speck on one cheek that adam thinks is a smashed fly

“you didn’t jump gansey!” ronan is saying, extremely exasperated.  “why!”

“i didn’t have my hammock yet when gansey first came,” she says.  she does not sound remotely sorry

adam looks up and discovers that there is in fact a hammock stretched between the trees.  it’s one of those heavy-duty camping numbers with thick canvas and a full insect net.  it’s also thirty feet in the air.  there are branches on the way down, but they are very precariously spaced.  adam does not want to know how she parkoured to leap onto his shoulders

“when you snap someone’s neck,” ronan says, “i’m not helping you hide the body”

“who says i haven’t already?”

“the fuck? and you didn’t ask me to help hide the body?”

she darts a few feet away and pulls herself into a tree.  adam watches with slight fascination as she shimmies out along a long branch until it dips under her weight.  as he gets to his feet, trying to piece together his wilted dignity, she rides her makeshift nature elevator down until she’s staring into his eyes again.  hugging the branch like a snake.  absolutely no consideration for how normal human beings behave. it’s almost marvelous

“sufficiently free of my attic, parrish?” ronan asks

“uh, yeah. yep”

“so this is opal,” ronan says

opal flips over so she’s hanging from the branch like a sloth.  then hooks her legs around it and reaches down until her palms are flat on the ground.  cartwheels out of the tree like a particularly feral acrobat.  adam jerks back to avoid being smacked by a faceful of twigs at the whipcrack slingshot of the branch bouncing back

opal pulls a pocketknife from one of the folds in the DIY parachute sewing machine tick protection onepiece from hell.  adam eyes her warily

“opal, this is parrish. or adam. whichever. don’t stab him”

“god,” adam says again

opal beams.  she opens the pocketknife, but all she does is start cleaning bits of plaque from between her teeth with the tip, which is somehow so much worse than stabbing.  adam looks at ronan and finds him pinching the bridge of his nose.  it occurs to adam that this is the only time he’s EVER seen ronan express any sense of embarrassment in any social situation.  ronan has no sense of propriety.  adam didn’t know he was capable of feeling embarrassed

he immediately likes opal just for that.

“yes,” opal says, unconcerned, answering a question no one’s actually asked.  “ronan is the normal one”

[formulatrash]

Sport is political. Like, everything is political but you can’t look at a sport where 99% of people involved are white, purportedly straight, cis men and be like, “this not political” because otherwise you’re not even looking at the thing. It is what it is and you can choose to be like, “I enjoy this problematic thing” - hell yeah, I do that with the whole of motorsport! 

But also: I would like it to be better and I’m happy to tell it so, y’know. You can look at the thing and be like damn bitch, I fucking love watching overpaid white, straight, privileged men go zoom zoom that shit sends me absolutely feral and that’s like. That’s ok. But if you remove the context of overpaid, white, straight, privileged men then you’re just living in a weird reality where you willingly do not see things as they are.

I was thinking about this this morning cus a charming fellow journalist (allegedly, personally I have never heard of them) sent me some hate mail about And We Go Green and I was like, stick it up your arse motherfucker. Their beef was that by flagging the environmental element of Formula E I was “making it political” well, yeah. Because it is. 

It’s political that we haven’t had major electric vehicle development before, it’s political that it’s considered taboo to bring up the automotive industry’s massive role in global warming. It’s political that it appeared at this point in time. It’s political all the German manufacturers flooded in over diesel gate. It’s political it tries to aim for a new audience because existing motorsport fans are considered too alienated by the idea of EVs, indoctrinated to the church of V12s. It’s not, like, extra political credit to say the planet’s dying. 

It annoys me, from a journalism perspective, that in motorsport everyone vaunts themselves on truth-telling and objectivity while peeling out quotes from PR-observed media sessions given by press-trained athletes with a contractual gun to their heads. Like, that’s barely journalism, that’s more like PR.

Idk why other people become journalists but for me, back when I went into the field (rather than motorsport) it was because I wanted to be a war correspondent so I have all these like, pesky fuckin ethics and shit that motorsport considers very gauche and unprofessional of me. Like hell yeah I’ll say Lando has nice tits and then also that Carlos should not be racist and perhaps it’s fucked up that there are barely any women over the age of 25 employed in motorsport, let alone driving the cars.

I love motorsport so much  and like, it’s fucked up and people in it do fucked up stuff - hell, I’m problematic as shit - and like. That’s kind of ok so long as we’re all like, trying to be better and acknowledging the situation. You don’t have to cancel shit to be like “damn, this thing is flawed but it absolutely does it for me and I think there’s worthwhile stuff to it” but equally if someone says to me, like, yo motorsport is extremely bad because it is basically just cavorting around on what’s left of the atmosphere then I would have to be like “mmm, true but I have somehow reconciled myself to this so I respect your position and understand my own.”

anyway I’ve completely forgotten what my original point was other than people shouldn’t send me shitty emails probably if they don’t want a shitty email back

[swaglexander-the-great]

If you feel like it : develop on your hatred of the new Beauty and the Beast movie? I've heard a lot of salt about the way the music score was handled 👀

O MAN DO NOT DO THIS

Every time I think about this film, rage fills me like a super saiyan powering up and i scream

How do i even start

i think i will do bullet points

these will not be in any coherent order, I take no criticisms on this or my extreme bias

also i have not watched this movie for like years so my rage may outweigh my accuracy BUT

The opening?? With Cate blanchett narrating?? Who do u think u are?? Lord of the Rings? Peter Jackson in an epic trilogy changing the world forever?? You’re Disney eating your own meal and shitting it out again don’t fucking even try it

They didn’t even change anything and the animated intro was much shorter and better

The enchantress enters like Malificent, acts like a trickster god japing bitches, but try to paint her as Good uwu Princess.

Gaston, roughly the size of an ox if the ox was a slightly buff man who would bounce off Terry Crew’s majestic chest like a ping pong ball

You don’t have to be a crusty cynical adult to narrow ur eyes at that twunk picking up a solid 170kg of two people and think CGI

Yes, a queer-coded snivelling sidekick who adores a horrible man is exactly the gay representation we all wanted may I lick ur boots Disney and also suck ur dick but only if we say no homo

Gaston’s sidekick (don’t ask me to spell french) bribing the bar people to like Gaston or something??? The whole point?? Is that Gaston DOES check off the list for Desirable Bachelor in those times!! Can hunt? Yes. Lorge? Yes. Well off? Yup! An asshole? Of course, but does that matter in these times? No! Your privilege is to wash his socks! But Belle is a Different and Special Girl who DOESN’T find Gaston attractive for all the things the village thots do! Gaston is the outer ‘perfection’ that society praises while he’s still a cunt, the Beast is seeing the goodness within no matter what society says! The whole movie is fucking inverted by that one goddamn scene!! I hate this film!!!

this also makes it fuckin weird that they then discriminate against Maurice and side with gaston in the end? The villagers just do whatever the fuck the writer wants them to do and in this it’s so painfully obvious, the CEO of disney may as well be standing there with flags directing their movements in the background, I hate this fucking film

Instead of making cool inventions belles dad just makes like, a weird dolls house if I remember correctly

THEY DUBBED THE WOLVES IWTH TIGER NOISES! W  H   Y

The Be My Guest was so lacklustre. It was like a clown singing kareoke in an empty warehouse while frisbees fly around. You wasted Ewan McGregor on this. Disney has no imagination anymore

To add to that, the ending ballroom scene dance thing?? Lacklustre. Disappoint. Bad dress.

The best character in this film is the horse, who not only remembers the impossible way to the Beast castle, but runs at max speed between the two locations (a half-day journey), regularly with ease, carries the Beast, who IS roughly the size of an ox, and fights off fucking wolves who also seem to totally ignore his presence

Disney robbed me of the one scene I did desperately want, which was Belle deadlifting the Beast on to the main character, the horse

THE PLAGUE

ok the fucking plague ok. You do not mess with the goddamn plague. And this wasn’t cowpox either, this was the full 1500’s shithole Paris Black Death burn-you-alive fucking PLAGUE. Belle’s mom had the Plague, and both her and her dad somehow did not contract this while living with her through her entire sickness, they go to a different town (ISOLATE U HEATHENS) and then?? The Beast and Belle GO BACK to a plague house and run their hands all over shit! Do you know how long the plague takes to die off?? Even TODAY when we dig up a plague pit, everyone has to get immunized, I know this from EXPERIENCE. Congratulations, you and the Beast either have plague or have introduced it to your lovely village. Do not fuck lightly with the plague.

The magic fucking teleportation book.

Why

what the shit

w

t

WHY

They use this shit to instantly Star Trek beam themselves into a plague house

I assume the Beast wasn’t using this to heist random women to see if they would fall in love with him because, like, why would you not do this when you can just politely return them with your stupid magical teleport book

People attack the castle? Use the magical teleport book dumbass

The Beast’s unnecessary, long, boring song from the top of some fucking tower, idk, I skipped it, I got bored

The Beast design. What’s the point if he doesn’t look like feral garbage please. Also his voice pissed me off but I can’t remember why

I dont like him even personality wise

give him to Guillemo del toro you cowards

This was set in Actual History for some fucking stupid reason, and for another unfathomable reason, it was set directly before the French Revolution, so I guess it’s not a happy ending at all. Who wants to be transformed into a guillotine ?

Why is it so fucking dark half the time

The teapot is creepy

Why in the shit did we get the Prince’s fuckin weird tragic backstory? We don’t care. Man get turned beast is what we come for. And why? Why do we need a tragic backstory to excuse his actions? Can he not just be an asshole? Rich, stupid asshole? Who then maybe has to learn a lesson? Instead of oh tortured soul rich boy is so misunderstood! No. Die.

Disney’s absolute desperate need to have characters be ONLY GOOD or BAD BAD makes me want to knee the face of the collective corporation so hard that they are sent into the Hell Dimension

Where did the hot priest at the start go? Why do I think of him sometimes

They want this to be painfully French, but somehow ends up and an even more agonizing blend between painfully British and ass-kissingly american.

Why does the castle just fall apart like that. What is holding it together? Spirit gum? Why? Stone that looks like it has been soldered together with a welding iron doesn’t just give out, or The Earth would have caved in millenia ago

Ian McKellan uses his Gandalf voice and in this film it’s honestly a crime and also jarring to hell

The prince is not hot at all

The stupid dubbed growl at the end which I try so hard to repress makes me want to throw myself into a swimming pool full of mace

The only 1 good thing about this film was the dude who got dressed up by the dresser and was so fucking happy about it.

People complain about the soundtrack, but I for one refused to listen to the songs that bored me within the first 20 seconds, and the ones I listened to were like average remakes of the OGs so that wasn’t really the worst sin

This film so visibly sucked its own dick that this is probably why it was banned in china

Thinking about this film makes me want to commit Violence so I think it’s about time I stopped

I will not be taking constructive criticism or counterpoints to anything about my thoughts on this ever.

Goodbye and thank you for your curiosity

[atlas-of-a-human-soul]

Dear Soulmate, pt. 22 (Soulmate AU)

22: His brother’s keeper

Summary: Flashing forward, Ethan and Y/N’s relationship grows stronger while Grayson is forced to deal with his broken timer.

Warnings: fluff, angst, sexual innuendoes

Word count: 3.3k

Dear Soulmate - Series Masterlist (Soulmate AU)  ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~       ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~       ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~       ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

One year later ~ 3rd Person POV

"Do you think Grayson is happy?" Y/N hummed, looking out the living room window as she laid in Ethan's arms, blissfully content with his arms around her, the right one drawing large circles over her swollen abdomen with every period cramp that made her want to be a man. It took Ethan a while to get used to the terrible pain and discomfort his soulmate felt with every period, especially with Grayson teasing him he's the only man who has ever known what it means to be a girl. However, through trial and error and a lot of research, Ethan found every possible way he can help his woman survive those dreaded days, relieving his own pain in the process.

"I think so." Ethan pressed his lips to her temple, his eyes darting to his twin and the way he nodded at this current conquest excitedly. A little too excited if you ask Ethan.

His brother had had his share of women in the past year, even more so after realizing Ethan and Y/N had completed their soulmate bond, effectively sealing their fates together. It stung, even tore at Ethan to know his brother is robbed of a soulmate, remembering just how hopeless and lost he felt when he believed Y/N didn't exist, but he couldn't make himself say anything to the girl curled up against him. He knew she could feel something wasn't right, but what good would it do if he told her just what? It would cause more damage and he never wanted to feel her in such emotional state ever again.

"This is his fifth girlfriend in twelve months. I'm not so sure." Y/N said matter of factly, sighing deeply as if she was trying to keep the sadness of it away from her. She tried talking to Grayson more than once. She tried to remind him of the things and values he told her he wanted to uphold. She tried everything, but he just wasn't there.

Grayson Dolan had distanced himself from his brother and Y/N, so much so he was already a few days short from moving out. She wanted him to stay, terribly so, for reasons she could not explain. It tugged at her heartstrings, the entire situation making her feel as if she's drowning, but she couldn't do anything about it. She had to accept it was his choice, for better or worse. After all, Ethan Dolan was her entire world now and she felt incredibly happy with him by her side.

"He'll find his way. Don't worry." With those comforting words, Y/N's painkillers finally started to overwhelm her, Ethan's soft whispers and tender touches lulling her to sleep.

Two years later

"No! Just stop! This is her graduation, bro!" Ethan gripped Grayson's elbow, pulling him back. He pushed him into the wall, restraining his drunk brother with both hands and legs pressed against him, using all the strength he could muster. After all, Grayson was always a little bigger than Ethan and while Ethan could usually take him down, but drunk Grayson was a force to be reckoned with.

"I just wanna see her! Let me see her!" Grayson shouted, struggling against his brother with all his might, his voice gruff, tone almost feral.

"Not like this. Not drunk off your ass, no filter kind of a way." Ethan pressed himself closer, feeling he might lose his advantage and he can't afford to let his twin in now. He couldn't let him ruin Y/N's night.

"P-please?" Grayson's voice dropped as did Ethan's heart, more so once he heard a hushed, confused little voice he knew better than his own, come up from behind him.

"What's going on here?"

Y/N's heart broke at the vulnerability she heard in Grayson's plea, even more so once she saw his tear-stained, red face and the way his chest moved against Ethan's strenuously.

"J-just wanted to con-congratulate you, Y/N/N." Grayson breathes out, looking over at the beautiful brown eyed woman he's been through life and death with.

Shaking her head, her hand on her mouth to stop the treacherous quivering, Y/N's eyebrows furrowed as her eyes watered. She focused on Ethan's bawled up fists, Grayson's shirt coming out from between his fingers as he gripped his clothes to help him keep him steady and at bay.

"For all that is sacred, unhand him Ethan!" She whisper shouted, coming closer, the first of her tears spilling over as Grayson stumbled toward her. Forgetting he's a foot taller and a lot heavier, he hugged her a little too carelessly, pressing her closer as he put almost all his weight on her, nearly tumbling over and crushing her.

Ethan felt her distress for she couldn't speak up, grabbing his brother by the clothes on his back and pulled him away.

"Bro, you're crushing her! What the fuck are you doing?!" Ethan didn't bother keeping his voice down, genuinely enraged with the situation. He wanted to help his twin, more than anything he wished he could find him an anchor to this world, but he had tipped over on the grand scale of things and he had went from the grey into the black.

"I'm sorry, Y/N/N. I'm so sorry." Grayson's strangled apologies had entirely shattered Y/N and she couldn't hold back her cries anymore.

"Grayson, why? Why are you doing this to yourself?!" She felt her chest constrict, the pain that came with a lack of air to her lungs hit her tenfold as the lump in her throat grew, obstructing her airways as well.

"You were my best friend and now I barely see you?! You were gone for almost two years, traveling the world and the next time I see you this happens? You're drunk! And you're not who I knew...You need help." She passed by Ethan, slapping his hands away as he tried to hold her back and keep her away, at a safe distance. He knew Grayson wouldn't hurt her on purpose, but he wouldn't take the risk. However, Y/N had a mind of her own - a complex, very emotional - listen to your heart - kind of a mind and he couldn't stop her from making this choice on her own - the choice to give his brother some sort of connection to this world; to save him from the raging storm inside his soul and anchor him enough for the waves to calm down.

"Please let us get you some help." She cupped Grayson's cheeks, gently to steady him, feeling his eyes look deep into hers, chocolate brown meeting murky waters of a long lost man that only wished for someone to keep. Someone to have and to hold and to cherish as his brother found in Y/N.

"O-okay."

Two years later

"Ethan, if you don't stop panicking, I will fucking drive myself!" Y/N shouted, her voice echoing the house, finally bringing some reason to a very distressed Ethan. He hadn't expected to wake up with contractions this night, nor ever in his life. He never expected he'd truly feel all the pain Y/N feels nor the fact that he's about to know what it means to give birth to twins. And he definitely didn't think he would be the one crying and running like a chicken with its head cut off, but here he is - crying, sweating buckets, unable to properly insert the key into his minivan because his hands are shaking like he's attached to a Pikachu who hates him.

Finally at the hospital, he asked for sedatives the doctors refused to prescribe in fear of it affecting Y/N's ability to give birth, which made him nauseous enough to throw up three times before joining Y/N in the delivery room.

Grayson arrived almost at the same time, forced into the room, but only by Y/N's head, strictly forbidden to check anything below her waist.

With both Dolan twins at her side, holding her hand, Y/N managed to bring two little humans into this world, a boy and a girl, each of them with very distinct soulmate marks on their bodies which truly made Y/N happy, knowing her children will have an easier road to love than she did.

And Ethan?

He watched his two little munchkins be pressed onto his soulmate's chest for the first time, covered in what would best be described as expired cheese and blood, but he could care less, leaning in to give them each a kiss, waiting for the cord to pulsate what's left of the blood and stem cells, so he could have the honor of cutting it. And yes, he cried, incredibly happy to be a father, to be with Y/N, to have the life he had been given. He never expected this to be his future and the gratitude he had was endless.

Twenty two years later

"Eth, honey?!" Y/N called out for Ethan, trying her best to prepare some breakfast as she knew Grayson would be by any moment now. He wanted to see his niece and nephew off, the twins leaving for their senior year of college any day now and another one finally starting his senior year at high school.

Three kids, twenty six years of soulmate kind of a marriage that they officially signed into the registry five years ago simply because Ethan was bored, numerous obstacles and all that while Y/N wrote a book on soulmate connections, specializing in a bond that existed solely on a spiritual level.

She and Ethan had quickly found they could feel each other even when they don't see each other, simply knowing where the other one is without telling one another. Whenever they tried hard enough, they could share dreams as well, something they learned early on because they always told each other the dreams they had and every bit of what they had experienced was the same. On the other hand, very rarely and only when emotions are running high, they could hear the other one's thoughts. That baffled them as it was random and very hard to realize at first, to notice an intrusion of someone elses thoughts inside your head, but it always came with a splitting headache so they only used it when it was absolutely necessary or as Y/N said - when Ethan tried to hide things from her.

And Grayson?

He had two failed marriages behind him, the second one falling apart at the moment. The only family he had was the one his brother and sister made for themselves, his dreams of it all working out long gone. His only source of happiness were the kids he was coming to see, all the way from Los Angeles to New Jersey where Ethan and Y/N ended up raising their children in.

"Yeah, beautiful?" Ethan peaked out from the hall, checking out his loving wife who had looked more enchanting as the years went by. He never got used to her, losing his breath every time he sees her, in every state she's in - emotional, angry, cheeky, happy, worried - every state she was ever in, Ethan loved her and he still couldn't believe she was his.

"We need milk. Someone drank all the almond milk and now I can't make us pancakes and I promised." She pursed her lips, throwing away the empty carton. Walking toward Ethan, she swayed her hips seductively on purpose, as if just asking wasn't enough to make him do anything she wanted. She slid her hands onto his shoulder, than her forearms over them until she was at her tiptoes, her lips ghosting over his as a small smile pushed its way onto her face when he brushed his nose against hers.

"Milk? Anything else?" Ethan cocked his eyebrow, smirking as he saw her cheeks flushed once she sensed his desire is greatly misplaced considering the timing.

"We just did anything else and I am more than willing to do anything else tonight too. But our birds are almost grown entirely and we need to send them on their merry way and I need you to spend some time with Grayson today. He's not doing well, E." Her forehead wrinkled, showing off all the worry lines she acquired over the years of taking care of three growing children, one of which took up after his uncle with all the allergies possible. And he loved every line. Every single crevice of her body, every damn imperfection, he only loved them more. Those imperfections stood witness of all the love they've shared, the life they lived. All of it.

"I know." Pecking the tip of her nose, Ethan groans, pressing his hard on against her just in case she changes her mind, but he knew she wouldn't.

"Go, you horny teenager." She whispered under her breath, kissing him properly like she always did before he left the house.

"I love you." Ethan mumbled, wanting nothing more than to take his wife upstairs, but he's a father too and he wanted his children to have a good last day before heading off to conquer the world.

"I love you too." She smiled against his lips, parting with him as if it's the last time she'll ever see him. The moment Ethan turned his back on her, Y/N slapped his ass, making him turn around with a mischievous glint in his eye.

"Oh, you're gonna have to be punished tonight. Thoroughly." Winking, Ethan left his wife in the kitchen, but she wasn't alone for long as the kids quickly came round and made her head hurt. Sometimes it felt like they were all still very much five years old, not twenty two and seventeen. But Grayson walked in a moment later too.

"You're already having a crazy house, even at eight." Grayson chuckled, putting down his suitcase before walking over to Y/N, pecking her on the cheek - longingly, sweetly, tenderly, before he leaned on the counter with his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes set on three grown up devils chasing each other, passing the kitchen every minute at least once.

"Always, Gray. Always." Y/N laughed, wiping her hands on her apron before taking it off as well, leaning on the counter herself, her hand tucking itself under Grayson's elbow, leaning her head on his shoulder.

"Just passed Ethan. He seemed chipper considering the time." Grayson stated, raising his right eyebrow in a teasing manor, forcing Y/N to hide her face in his arm for she knew Grayson knew why Ethan woke up so happy today and that she had a huge role in that.

"Yeah. So, how...how are you? Considering all?" She changed the topic to something she was more interested in. It was never easy on her, knowing Grayson's timer never worked after their accident and she felt somewhat responsible. It hurt her seeing Grayson crumble, seeing him lonely and bitter over love, over everything she had and was simply out of reach. Every girl he had was without a soulmate, each of them giving up for various reasons. Mostly, she missed Grayson. She missed him all the time, because he was always traveling, keeping busy. She missed his smile, the way he'd giggle, the way he'd scream the house down and how he'd always start up a dance party at any hour to make her laugh. He was always her best friend, her person, the one who knew what it felt to be on death's doorstep. He understood, he helped her through and he was there when Ethan wasn't. She forgave her husband for that, but she couldn't forget who was there holding her hand when every step she made was hell.

"Uh, fine. I guess." Grayson scratched his right eyebrow, clearing his throat.

Y/N leaned over just in time, just enough time to see.

"Fucking shit, your timer works!" She couldn't hide her excitement, noticing it was fully functional which mean Grayson might have something good on the horizon.

Frowning, Grayson looked at his wrist in panic, his eyes widening once he noticed the clock ticking too fast, way too quickly toward zero.

"What the?" Y/N managed to say just as the wind is knocked out of her lungs, her hand going to her heart and her look fixating in the distance, right on her three kids who were forming a pile of humans right at the front door, screaming over something she couldn't quite understand. Not when her heart stopped beating, not when her lips parted as a strangled cry passed them, not when all she could feel is pain.

And then the pain was gone, the timer on Grayson's wrist glowing brightly as he caught Y/N just before she fell to her knees, her eyes fighting to keep open while she gripped Grayson's comforting arms with all her might, hearing nothing but a faint 'I love you' echoing in her head, the splitting headache taking over, forcing her to give up and close her eyes; close her eyes to the world and open her eyes to her connection.

"Ethan?" She stood in the middle of a grand white staircase, the light blinding her.

"Right here." Y/N turned around swiftly, her hair falling forward as she looked at her husband, all dressed in white, just as young as he was when their connection was sealed.

"What? What is this?" Her voice shook and her lips quivered, the view of him looking so angelic rendering her shaken beyond belief. She couldn't understand, grasp what's happening, even if she knew.

"I promised you a forever and I meant it. Our forever just got a little shorter than we thought, yet so...so much longer than what I thought it would be." Ethan smiled, his eyes brimming with tears as he came closer, taking her shaky hands in his freezing cold ones, leaning down as he placed his forehead on hers, both closing their eyes for a single moment.

"I don't understand." She whispered fearfully, tightening her hold on Ethan, looking up at him with her teary eyes, her chin trembling.

"I love you. I didn't want to go, but we don't always have a choice, my beautiful, beautiful girl." Lifting his left hand, he placed it on her warm cheek, watching her lean into it instinctively, making it harder for him that it has to be. But he couldn't take the easy way out, even though it was offered to him. She didn't take it back then either.

"We've had so many happy years. Kids, each other, a big house and great jobs...we had it all. I'm sorry I couldn't be there with you on the porch swing eating biscuits like you planned when we get old, but I'll still be with you. In your dreams, always." Pressing his lips against her forehead, he took a step back, even when she started to cry.

"NO!"

"I will be waiting, my love. Always yours." Ethan started walking up the staircase, glancing back at Y/N, but her feet are unable to move no matter how hard she willed them to.

"Ethan, please! Please! I love you, please!"

Y/N's eyes snapped open, the harsh light unforgiving as her kids came into focus above her. And Grayson. He was there too, so painfully similar to the man she married.

Sitting up, her eyes fell to the timer that glowed so gloriously, tears falling down, her hand touching her chest right where she used to feel Ethan, finding nothing there at all.

That's when she realized:

"He's gone."

 ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~       ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~       ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~       ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Tags: @accalialionheart @castiel-savvy18 @notanotherdolantwinsblog @peacedolantwins @mutuallynotmutual  @fallinginlove-16  @heyits-claire @daddygraysonsbitch @godlydolans @xalayx @ethanhes @dolandolll

[thepartyresponsible]

here’s the first fill for my nine day 900 followers celebration!

this one’s been hanging around in my wip folder for awhile. it was part of my post-endgame process, where i kept going back to different points in canon and trying to figure out how to avoid getting to that place.

so here’s what happens if post-snap clint barton meets some interesting asgardians in a bar.

The bars are overcrowded. It’s a pretty natural inclination, and Clint doesn’t blame anyone for it, least of all himself. He’s been faithful to his one drink a night promise since the day he became a father, but he’s not a father anymore, so he figures those promises are ash, just like his kids.

“All three,” Miles says, grimacing sympathetically as he free pours another generous approximation of a double. “Bad luck.”

“Well,” Clint says, chin up, shoulders straight, hands steady. “I am a Barton.”

He’s on house arrest. Probably shouldn’t be here. But who’s going to enforce it? Half the world is dead. The President, half of Congress, half the Cabinet, half of every nursing home and first grade class. Half of everyone, everywhere.

He should be home with Laura.

He can’t be home with Laura. He can’t look at her. She can’t look at him. He keeps making stupid, terrible jokes, and she keeps laughing, and, every fucking time, he thinks she’s gonna pack her bags, still laughing, and drive off, still laughing, and never ever come back.

She’d been at the grocery store when it happened. She didn’t have to watch. He’s grateful for that. Jealous, too.

But he can’t shake the thought that, if she’d been home, if she’d been holding them, the universe wouldn’t have dared take them away from her. She’s a fighter; she’s a Goddamn angel. And Clint’s whole life is an endless chronicle of him ruining everything he touches.

“Hello,” a woman says, sliding into the barstool beside him. She sits unnecessarily close to him, casually invading the bubble of his space.

There’s a lot of that, a lot of people looking for a distraction. Clint ignores her.

She steals his drink, and he ignores that, too. “You sober enough to be useful?” she asks.

“Nope,” Clint says. He’s many things right now, but useful sure as hell isn’t one of them. He’s not useful to a single Goddamn person. Not to his grieving wife, not to his dead kids, not to the shocked-out remainders of his friends and allies.

“Erm,” says a man, from the other side of the woman. The voice is familiar, raises alarm bells even through the thick haze of grief and exhaustion and alcohol. “Barton,” he says, carefully, “we need your help.”

Clint hasn’t been this drunk since the time Nat had to stitch him up with no anesthetic in a freight car running through Slovenia. But he’s a Barton. If there’s anything Bartons can do while absolutely plastered, it’s beat the shit out of people smaller than themselves.

“Whoa,” the woman says, sliding between them. She bounces a little on the balls of her feet, flashes a wolfish grin and impressive forearms. “Sorry,” she says, “I need him. You need him.”

“No one on this planet,” Clint says, “needs him.”

Loki waves over her shoulder, gesture all jaunty and sharp. There’s a complicated look on his face that might be shame but is probably just a half-assed impression of it. “Now, Barton,” he says, “I know we didn’t part on the best of terms, but wouldn’t you like to have your family back?”

This time, the woman doesn’t get between them in time. Clint vaults onto the bar, feints around her, and lunges. He tackles Loki to the ground and slams his face into the floor and then starts throwing punches. He figures he’ll stop when he feels better about things.

Or maybe he’ll stop when he starts feeling any Goddamn thing at all.

Some of the fun goes out of it when he notices that Loki’s not fighting back. But Loki fucked with him plenty back when he was helpless to stop it, when he wasn’t fighting back at all, and so, even when it’s not fun, there’s a grim, bloody feeling of righteousness that keeps him going.

Eventually, the woman loops her arms around his chest and pulls him away. She’s strong, stronger than she should be. Thor-strong, maybe. Not quite Hulk, but leaning that direction.

“I know,” she says, agreeably. And now that he’s thinking about Thor, he can finally place that Asgardian accent. “Trust me, I know. But we need his brain. Could take off a few fingers, if you’d like. But let’s wait until after we save the world, shall we?”

“World’s done,” Clint tells her. He’s breathing hard, feels like maybe he’s shaking. “It’s over. What fucking world are we supposed to save?”

Loki sits up. He has the grace to look a little winded when he reaches up to rub the blood off his face. “This one,” Loki says, waving a hand at all the staring bar patrons. He’s theatrical, tipping toward full-on jazz hands, and Clint thinks, yeah, cutting off a finger or two is starting to sound kinda nice.

“Come on, Barton,” Loki says, face twisting up into a feral smile. “Time doesn’t run just one direction. We have a plan.”

Clint knows better than to make deals with strange women and trickster gods. He knows, better than anyone, exactly how much humanitarian there is in Loki, exactly how far his mercy and empathy extend. He remembers what Loki asked him, the things they planned together.

But the whole planet’s grieving. His family is gone.

His children are ash, and Clint can’t think of a deal he wouldn’t make for a chance to bring them back.

“If this is a trick,” Clint says, “I don’t care whose brother you are. I will murder you and burn the body, and Thor won’t ever know.”

“He’s in,” the woman says, triumphantly. She swipes a mostly-full bottle of whiskey from Miles and then nods toward the door. “We’ll celebrate on the way.”

[episodesthebadgirlsclub]

A Guide to VH1's Drunk, Loud, Unapologetic Golden Age of Reality TV

Rock of Love,' 'Flavor of Love,' 'I Love New York,' and others are on Prime, so it's time to revisit Somethin's staircase poop.

Watch on:  https://episodesthebadgirlsclub.com/episodes

Spanning roughly from 2006 to 2010, a time period which yielded such glorious shows as Flavor of Love, Rock of Love, and I Love New York, this is, undoubtedly, an opportunity to re-immerse oneself in the golden era of trash television. Without these now-classic shows, the world would never know Tiffany "New York" Pollard, the most GIFable queen of the entire internet. It would never learn that "people who eat basil are lame," or that "stripper shoes go with any outfit," among other gems of wisdom from Rock of Love Bus's glorious (and often wasted) cast member Ashley Klarich. Truly, this earth would have been worse off had it never been privy to Tykeisha "Somethin" Thomas from Flavor of Love season 2 infamously defecating on the staircase after a clock ceremony (more on this later), or Nikki taking a test-tube shot out of Gia's vagina on Rock of Love. These contestants and their hijinks were far from the Hannahs and Laurens of The Bachelor universe, unafraid to let their freak flags wave, get laid, get drunk, be loud, and drag each other ruthlessly.

While there's now an entire universe of 90 Day Fiancé and more than half a dozen Real Housewives franchises fulfilling our raccoon-like need to devour absolute garbage, VH1's staple lineup of 00s reality TV just hit differently. These shows were unhinged in strange and hilarious ways, and remain endlessly quotable, memeable, and, now, nostalgic for reality TV fans. These characters' willingness to go to astronomical levels of absurdity and all-out, televised chaos for the object of their (heavily staged) affection remains mesmerizing, undoubtedly egged on by producers and accentuated by editors' additions of tongue-in-cheek sound and visual effects (like Flavor of Love's Hottie getting a bike chime noise every time she blinked her big, false lashes at someone).

Now, years after their sell-by date, we can joyously revisit these wonderfully subversive pieces of reality TV perfection. Here's a helpful guide to VH1's greatest shows, all of which embody the wildness of an abandoned amusement park run by feral badgers.

If it's rap legends, boss bitches, and bodily fluids you crave, get a taste of Flavor of Love.

After his breakup with 80s actress Brigitte Nielsen (their relationship was documented in the aptly titled series Strange Love, a spin-off of The Surreal Life), VH1 producers gave Public Enemy's Flavor Flav the chance to find The One on Flavor of Love, a dating series that parodied The Bachelor. Unlike The Bachelor, however, the series featured a racially diverse cast of women vying for one of Flav's trademark clocks to wear around their necks, signifying that they would advance to the next round. While many Black writers called out the show for being exploitative and perpetuating offensive stereotypes, the series was a ratings beast that lasted three seasons and led to multiple spinoffs, and the women that stepped into Flav's mansion became some of the greatest contestants in reality TV history thanks to their unapologetic, unadulterated personalities. They kept it real at all times, leading to scenes and lines that are still fondly memorialized on the internet to this day. There was Hottie's assurance that everyone says she reminds them of Beyoncé; Pumkin launching a spit missile at New York; the aforementioned poop on the staircase incident (Somethin explained that she tried to hold it, but her stomach said, "Bitch, you've got me fucked up;" Flav then applauded Somethin for being "real with it"); and too many moments from Tiffany "New York" Pollard to count. For two seasons, New York ran the other women ragged, implementing grade-A trash talk, stare-downs, and fearlessness in pursuit of her man Flav. Her iconic level of drama rendered her worthy of various spin-offs, a Brooklyn art show of works created in her honor, and a throne as the reigning as the queen of reaction GIFs. Every minute of television where the camera is on New York is worth the watch.

Watch :  Seasons1  https://episodesthebadgirlsclub.com/flavor_of_love_season_1 Season2 https://episodesthebadgirlsclub.com/flavor_of_love_season_2

If you stan stripper heels, giant breast implants, and hair teased to the heavens, look no further than Rock of Love.

For three seasons, Bret Michaels—best known as the lead singer of hair-metal band Poison and the co-star of Pamela Anderson's lesser-known sex tape—searched America (and whatever part of France the extremely horny Angelique is from) to find his tour bus partner for life. The incessantly sloppy-drunk contestants came in hot, armed with an arsenal of clear heels, ass-cheek-grazing polyester dresses, and an insatiable desire to make out with Bret Michaels. But they were more than Sunset Strip groupies, strippers, and porn stars; they were women on a mission to get their man (and some screen time). There were standouts from all three seasons, like the big-haired, 80s metal goddess Heather, who got Michaels's name tattooed on her neck; the cackling, painfully earnest cowgirl Rodeo; and mean girl Ashley, whose magnificent implants and the way she said "bitch" made her extra larger-than-life. But those women were just a few in a kaleidoscope of big personalities, including one contestant who took everyone's used socks after a hockey match to keep for her personal use. In the end, Bret never found his true match, but the search yielded hours of premium entertainment.

You love Tiffany Pollard? Then you'll definitely love I Love New York.

After two unsuccessful efforts to win Flav's final clock, Pollard landed a spin-off dating show of her own. For two seasons, Pollard and her frighteningly brutal mom, Sister Patterson, put a group of studs and duds through the absolute ringer as they pledged their undying love for New York. Within that group were some standouts that made for excellent television, like excruciatingly dweeby white boy Mr. Boston, mouthy "stallionaire" Chance, his more tender brother Real (who tragically died of colon cancer in 2015), outspoken little person Midget Mac, Italian mama's boy Frank the Entertainer, and countless others. There was toe sucking, speedo wearing, a pretty bad nosebleed, and a fervent church service led by Sister Patterson. It was worth watching for Pollard's electrifying presence alone, but became a true carnival thanks to the full cast and their antics.

Watch: https://episodesthebadgirlsclub.com/i-love-new-york-season-1-episodes

If it's a group of lingerie-clad women flipping off outdated ideas of respectability you like, go with Charm School.

Charm School sought to do the impossible: reform the hard-partying and harder-fighting women from Flavor of Love and Rock of Love, and turn them into polite, well-behaved ladies. It did so in grossly outdated ways, like telling the women to dress and behave less sexually. But the ladies fought back in every possible way, finding it hard to leave their boozing, trash-talking, and wearing-lingerie-as-outerwear ways behind them. (Bless them for that.) Hosted by Mo'Nique, Sharon Osbourne, and Ricki Lake in seasons 1, 2, and 3, respectively, the show saw contestants forced to perform challenges aimed at molding them into business-savvy, self-sufficient women, and in some cases, contestants seemed to actually care about evolving into better versions of themselves. But many others weren't even trying, and the show will be forever remembered as the one where Osbourne beat up aspiring trophy wife Megan Hauserman after she insulted Ozzy Osbourne during the season 2 reunion. Not the most charming moment.

Watch: 

season1 https://episodesthebadgirlsclub.com/charm_school_season_1

season 2 https://episodesthebadgirlsclub.com/Charm_school_season_2   

season 3 https://episodesthebadgirlsclub.com/charm-school-3

Source: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/kz4x3y/tiffany-pollard-new-york?utm_source=stylizedembed_vice.com&utm_campaign=kz4x3y&site=vice

[unfortunate-stranger-losers]

Six Baudelaires AU, Part Three {AO3} {Masterlist} {Part One} {Part Two}

Chapter Three → in which Sunny cusses quite a bit

“The baby won’t stop biting!” Esme shouted. 

“Well, put her in the glove compartment!” said Olaf, taking a swig from a bottle. 

Sunny let out a feral hiss and flipped them all off. 

She was not pleased to be here in the slightest, and she made absolutely certain that everybody around her was aware of this fact. They’d been driving for quite some time, and she was very proud of the fact that she had annoyed the shit out of all of the other passengers. The White-Faced Women were leaning against the window, while the Hook-Handed Man gave her a sympathetic glance and her former coworkers, sitting on the floor underneath the seats, covered their ears and groaned. 

“Fuck you!” Sunny cheered again. “Weiss!” That last word meant something like, “Violet’s going to invent something that’ll kill you!” She had no doubt that her siblings had escaped their predicament, just like she had no doubt they would find one of their parents at Headquarters, and they would solve everything. 

“She won’t fit.” Esme groaned, opening the glove compartment, only to see several costumes shoved in. 

“Nin!” Sunny shouted, which meant, “Lilac will strangle you with her ribbon!” 

“Can’t we just throw her out the window?” Esme asked. 

“Esme, we need her for her fortune!” Olaf reminded her. “Besides, it’s dangerous to throw things out of car windows.” 

He then immediately rolled down the car window and threw out his now empty bottle. 

“Nat!” Sunny said, which meant, “Solitude will set venomous reptiles on you!” 

“Are we there yet?” the Hook-Handed Man asked. “The kid’s threats are starting to make me nervous.” 

“She’s a baby, hooky.” Olaf said. “She can’t hurt you.” 

“Hyn!” “No, but Klaus can!” 

“And we won’t reach headquarters for a while.” Olaf said. “But I know a decent camping spot in a few miles. We can stop at Mount Fraught before we set fire to the Valley of Four Drafts.” 

“Mount Fraught will be cold this time of year.” Kevin said. 

“It’s almost False Spring, it’ll be fine.” Olaf shrugged. 

“Once we burn down Headquarters,” Esme said, “We’ll be looking for the Sugar Bowl, won’t we?” 

“Yes, dear,” Olaf said, tiredly, “We’ll find your precious sugar bowl.” 

“You know it’s not just precious to me, Olaf! It’s incredibly important! It-” 

“Not in front of the prisoner!” 

Sunny leaned over and bit Esme’s finger. 

“Ow! You stupid brat!” Esme groaned. 

“Bitch!” Sunny shouted back. 

“Ugh, children do nothing but complain.” said one of the White-Faced Women. 

“Yes.” said her sister. “Remember the Quagmires? They complained when we had them in the trunk, then in the cage, then the fountain.” 

“We eventually got them to shut up.” Esme said. “And we got her horrible brother to stop being such a nuisance, no thanks to the lot of you. Olaf and I had to do that messy business ourselves, and while it was quite enjoyable, you know how much we hate actually working.” 

Sunny opened her mouth, about to add a threat that Nick would slaughter them all, only to remember, with a jolt, that Nick wasn’t quite in the mood to fight. That still startled her quite a bit; she’d never known Nick to not want to fight someone. This new… this behavior he had at the moment was foreign to her, and incredibly scary. 

Could that happen to me? 

No. No, my siblings will find me first. 

She glanced into the backseat, to see that the Hook-Handed Man actually did look a bit uncomfortable. She wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing, but she was snapped out of her thoughts when Colette said, “Are we going to pitch tents for camping? I’m pretty good at that!” 

“Oh, no, we’ll just make the baby do that for us.” Olaf said. “Infant servants are pretty useful.” 

“Which tent will she sleep in?” Hugo asked. 

“Not ours!” a White-Faced Woman said. “I hear babies steal your breath while you sleep!” 

“There’s a casserole dish she can sleep in.” Olaf said. 

“Will that be safe?” Esme asked. “You just said we need her alive.” 

“There’s holes she can breathe through, and the lid can protect her from snow gnats.” 

“What are snow gnats?” Kevin asked. 

“Annoying insects that travel in packs.” Olaf shrugged. 

“Swarms.” Sunny corrected. 

“See, there she goes in her stupid foreign language.” Esme said. 

“Actually, she said-” the Hook-Handed Man began. 

“Nobody cares!” Olaf said. 

“I do.” Hugo said kindly. “I think it’s very interesting.” 

“It’s not.” Olaf said. “And if you freaks want to remain employed here, you’ll learn to accept that I am always right.” 

“Wrong.” Sunny said, and then she bit Esme again. 

The Baudelaires walked by the river for several hours in silence. They carried the coats at first, before eventually passing them around to wear. Violet had three, to cover her hospital gown, and Solitude was wrapped in the poncho like a burrito, carried by Nick while she muttered to Babbitt. 

“Will Babbitt be alright in this cold?” Klaus asked. 

“Their species can completely freeze over in cold temperatures.” Solitude assured him. “So they may stop moving, almost look dead, but they’ll be alright, and they’ll unfreeze when we get somewhere warm. We’ll have to catch them up on whatever happens.” 

“Are they frozen now?” Lilac asked, hugging her coat tightly around her. 

Solitude shook her head. “Under the poncho, they’re fine. But they could freeze any time.” 

Nick hugged her a little, and Violet said, “Do you think we’ll find somewhere warm to sleep? It’s getting a little dark.” 

“There were lots of caves on the maps, where bears hibernate.” Klaus said. “Hopefully there aren’t any bears right now. Nick, you remember where they are?” 

Nick nodded, still hugging Soli very close. 

Lilac looked up, and then said, “Um, guys? What’s that?” 

They looked up, to see what looked like an ominous cloud of tiny, white buzzing objects heading towards them. 

Klaus considered. “I remember reading about mountainous insect life, but I can’t quite remember.” 

“Try to remember, please.” Violet said. 

“Those are snow gnats.” Nick said. “They live in cold mountain areas and have been known to group themselves into well-defined shapes.” 

“They seem to be heading this way.” Violet said. “Are they harmless?” 

Klaus considered. “I’m trying to remember… oh! Yeah, they’re ill-tempered and enjoy stinging people for no reason whatso- ow!” 

The snow gnats had reached the Baudelaires, and they all let out cries as they were swiftly stung. The children started to run, with everyone but Nick, who was still holding onto Soli, waving their arms to try and shoo them away. 

“Are the stings poisonous?” Lilac asked. 

“Mildly!” Klaus said. “We should be fine so long as we don’t get stung too much- OW!” 

“How do we- SHIT!- get rid of them?” Lilac asked, as they quickened their pace considerably. 

“They don’t like fire!” Nick said, clutching Solitude to his chest so that she could get as few stings as possible. “Even the smell of smoke drives them away!” 

“Smoke?” Violet shouted. “How are we supposed to get smoke out here?” 

Lilac grabbed the last coat, and said, “At least cover your faces! Don’t- ow!- let them sting- ow! Shit!” 

The Baudelaires followed her instructions, covering their faces with their coats, and as Solitude slowly moved her head to peer around, she shouted, “There!” 

Distantly, they could see a very thin cloud of smoke. Not enough to be worrying, but enough that the Baudelaires sighed with relief. “Thank fuck. Everyone move!” Violet said. 

They ran towards the smoke, and as they got closer, the snow gnats began to dissipate, until the Baudelaires were standing outside the entrance to a small cave, and the insects had all fled. 

“Let’s go in.” Lilac said. “Hopefully they won’t follow us.” 

“Hopefully we don’t awaken a hibernating animal.” Klaus said. 

They stepped inside, and as their eyes adjusted to the dark, they could see the distant shapes of several small figures around a campfire, flickering softly in the damp area. One of the figures approached, and as she did, the Baudelaires very much wished they had taken their chances with the snow gnats. 

“Oh, fuck.” Nick said. 

“Hello, cakesniffers!” said Carmelita Spats. “What are you doing here?” 

Sunny sat on the ice, poking at it with a stick. 

Thankfully, she’d figured out quite quickly how to pitch a tent; it was very similar to the blanket forts Lilac used to make for them. The adults had left her alone for quite some time, preferring to discuss how exactly they would burn down VFD Headquarters, so she wandered over to the frozen waterfall. She’d never seen one before, and she could tell that the river was frozen enough to stand on, because she’d thrown rocks to see if she could break the ice. 

She wondered if she could break through the frozen water with her stick, and maybe wash up a little. She was still covered in dirt from the Carnival, and she was starting to feel like she’d rather look like herself than a wolf baby, as her disguise wasn’t useful anymore. 

“Hey, baby!” 

Sunny glanced over her shoulder to see the Hook-Handed Man approaching. He knelt in front of her, holding out a small, toddler-sized coat and outfit in his hooks. 

“I made you this.” he said. “Count Olaf would be very displeased if you were to freeze to death before he could get your fortune.” 

Sunny wasn’t entirely sure how to respond; true, she was very cold, but it wasn’t as if this man was her ally. 

“What are you doing?” he asked. 

In response, Sunny pounded the ice again. 

The Hook-Handed Man watched her a moment, and then he handed her the outfit and slammed the ice with his hook. It broke open, and Sunny could see the cold water underneath. 

He smiled over at her, and hesitantly, she smiled back. 

“You’ve, uh, got something on your face.” he said, laughing slightly. “Chabo.” 

Sunny giggled, and hugged the outfit to herself. It felt very warm and comfortable. “Tank you.” she said. 

“Oh, don’t say that.” the Hook-Handed Man said, straightening up. “I’m your captor, and you’re my prisoner.” 

Sunny giggled, and then repeated, “Tank you!” 

“Don’t say that so loud!” the henchman glanced towards the tents. “I better go before the boss realizes I’m gone. Don’t drown out here, alright?” 

“Inmergo.” Sunny said. “Of course not, I can’t die before my siblings find me.” 

He gave her a skeptical look, and then left. Sunny sighed and dipped her hands into the water, shivering in the cold. She brought the water to her face, wiping off some of the dirt. She glanced at her reflection in the ice. 

There. She looked a bit more like herself. 

Now her parents would be able to recognize her. 

That night, as Sunny slept in the casserole dish, shivering in the cold and pulling the coat the Hook-Handed Man had made for her tighter around her, she wondered how warm her siblings were. 

I’m sure Violet and Lilac made something to save them. And Nick and Klaus know these mountains, and Solitude can use Babbitt to track me- can frogs track? Babbitt certainly seems very good at finding things. 

Sunny wished she could see the stars; though she’d never been camping before, her Mother and Nick had told her once that the best part of sleeping outside was the unobstructed view of the stars. But then she’d be colder, and she didn’t want to freeze before her siblings could get to her. 

She wondered what was going to happen. They’d be here soon, surely, but… she still worried. It’d taken them a while to find Nick- no, no, that was just because they had to stay with Mr Poe. Her siblings couldn’t be far behind. They’d find her. They always would. 

She thought of Nick again, and how scared he’d been recently. She hoped that whatever had happened to him went away, and he could be brave again, brave enough to help his siblings find her, and find VFD. And she hoped that her siblings weren’t too worried about her. She could take care of herself fine. 

What would her siblings say if they were with her now? Solitude would let her play with Babbitt, to calm her down. Klaus and Nick would tell her stories, or read to her a little. Violet would try to invent something to get them out, or to make them warmer. And Lilac… Lilac would hold her, and tell her everything would be alright. And then she’d sing to her. 

Slowly, Sunny sat up and pushed the lid of the casserole dish aside. And even though the cold wind hit her, it was worth it. 

“You were right.” Sunny whispered, looking up at the bright, shining stars. 

And, quietly, she began to hum.

[echodrops]

My KH3 Fix-It Dream

(Warning, long post is long because part way through I just started writing bits of the actual fic, oops.)

There’s a lot of people complaining about this and that with the KH3 plot, but I honestly don’t have too many complaints because the story we were given was about what I expected (did anyone realllyyy believe that Kairi was going to become a badass Keyblade wielder? Search your heart, you know you saw this travesty coming), except on one front: Vanitas was tragically under-utilized. After being hyped up so much in the trailers, you’d think that he would have at least had a go in the game that was worthy of his character. But KH3′s Vanitas was little more than a shadow of BBS’s, and that’s a darn shame.

So, I present to you: a fix-it fic plot bunny that fixes several things at once:

1) Vanitas doesn’t die. Okay, actually, it still works fine if he does die, but we’ll take his “I’m always with you” suggestion literally--Vanitas is a heart of Darkness wrapped in a body made of bad feelings, and that final battle was one brutal attack on the feels after another. The fear, anxiety, horror, and desperation the Lights, especially Sora upon witnessing what happens to Kairi, manifests as so much accumulated negativity that Vanitas--even though he actually wants to!!--can’t stay dead, and his heart, which naturally lingered with Sora and Ventus even after his defeat, gets shoved back into another body made entirely of other people’s suffering and pain, now even more unstable and dysfunctional than before.

2) The final battle happens. Kairi is saved, but Sora disappears. While the finally-reunited good-guy crew are busy coming out of shock planning how they’ll inevitably rescue Sora, they’re also struggling with another major issue: what to do about Vanitas, who is as comatose as Ven was at the beginning of BBS, a broken heart in a broken body.

3) Nobody wants to say “mercy kill”... The idea is there, but none of the gang is really willing to do it barring maybe Roxas, whose practicality is actually alarming (”You’re not going to be feeling so sympathetic when he wakes up and stabs somebody, you know. Don’t say I didn’t warn you”). Even Aqua, who knows as well as Ven how much of a danger Vanitas is, can’t really convince herself to attack someone who's completely helpless. But what to do, if not that? He isn’t waking up, and anywhere they leave him, he’ll have to be guarded around the clock--he still, technically, has the ability to trigger the apocalypse if left unattended to chase hearts of light, you know.

4) It’s Ven’s idea to take him to Destiny Islands. That was Master Xehanort’s plan for Ven, after all, when they were first separated: let Ven’s empty body waste away, forgotten, in a backwater world. Instead he’d made contact with Sora--and nobody wants to say that either, that maybe there’s the tiniest bit of hope: somehow, some way, maybe Sora can still be reached, maybe the call of yet another heart in need will be irresistible enough to make the unfailing hero claw his own way back from the brink...

5) What really happens is this: Sora’s mother has had MORE THAN ENOUGH. Spaceships start dropping out of the sky, the deserted play island is somehow brimming with grown men and women running around, she sees Kairi of all people wandering right back into town as if she hasn’t been inexplicably absent for months... So where is Sora? Where is Sora and why is he not coming home? Finally, after three days of radio silence from Kairi and Riku (Riku’s been gone for years, and now he’s suddenly here, without Sora? When has there ever been a such thing as Riku without Sora?), Sora’s mother prepares a scolding on the level of God casting humans out of the Garden of Eden and indignantly rows her way out to the play island. It seems there’s a whole crowd gathered at a bonfire down the beach, but she never makes it there. Because there’s Sora right there on the paopu island, there’s Sora, only everything’s wrong--who let him dye his hair like that, what is he wearing, why won’t he wake up--”Sora? SORA!”

6) It’s Riku who tells her the truth. That Sora is gone, in the wind, not even a body to bury except this one, this boy who’s wearing the face of the son she hasn’t held in her arms in ages--maybe never will again. This is what he looks like now, Riku says, but this isn’t him. (How? How is this not her son? Under his bangs there’s the same freckle at the edge of his forehead she used to give good night kisses to--)

7) They make several attempts to stop her (”Ma’am,” the man with brown hair and guilty eyes says, “Ma’am, you really can’t--he’s a danger to--”) but none of them stopped her son either and if they’ll stand by and let the light of all the worlds extinguish itself, let’s be honest, they’re just not that good of guardians. She takes Sora the boy named Vanitas home. In Sora’s old bed he looks comical, the only time, maybe, that he’ll ever look tall, and the shadow of the toys and clutter she hadn’t had the heart to clean (not after the day she remembered that the room up the stairs wasn’t just sealed up storage, that a boy had lived there, that his worn clothes were still strewn across the floor, that she’d had a son at all, Sora, for a whole year she’d forgotten the name, the sound, the jut of his lip in a pout--) falls over his face. They say he’s not her son.

8) Well, she thinks, we’ll see about that.

And lol I know that was a million words but like that was the prologue and the actual rest of the fic goes like this:

Sora’s mom takes care of Vanitas’ comatose body because hey, she’s a pediatric nurse, that kind of thing is literally her job. Riku and Kairi try to bodyguard her for a couple weeks, but the longer Vanitas stays asleep, the less and less often they come around--they’ve got to find Sora, after all.

The longer she takes care of Vanitas-not-Sora though, the worse her loneliness gets, until the deep vein of Darkness sadness (she lost her son not once, not twice, but three times) resonates with the shattered remnants of Vanitas’ heart and she forcefully because Sora got his busybodiness from somewhere generously connects with him enough to wake him up.

(“Go away,” answers a voice without speaking.

“Why?”

“You’re annoying me. I’m tired.”

“You’re hurt.”

“That’s what I said.”

No it isn’t.

There’s a certain sort of sadness only people who’ve lived through losing the light of their lives will ever know. There’s a kind of kinship in surviving separation. Her heart aches, goes out of her all at once, reaching--

“I made my decision. Leave me alone.”

"Did you make that decision because you were alone?”)

Only, you know, Vanitas doesn’t want to be awake or even alive now that he has absolutely no purpose, no master, no X-blade, no mission, nowhere to go, and no chance of ever reuniting with Ven--so fuck off, he’s not going to eat those home-made muffins and he’s not going to go take a bath even if he does stink, and he’s not going to talk, and he’s not coming out from under the covers for anything less than the sweet release of a swift execution.

...But that’s so boring.

So he insults her instead. And threatens her and mocks her and knocks over the water glasses she brings and lets the Unversed chase her out of the room and picks out all the stitches on this ugly hand-sewn quilt and asks her why she’s got a room full of toys but no kid to go in it.

No sell: she’s a pediatric nurse and dealing with sick, miserable, screaming children is what she does every day. And anyway, from seven to eight Sora threw a year of temper tantrums that make this boy look positively mild.

There’s one more thing working in her favor: he’s still curious. She learns: he’s never had a fruit smoothie, read a comic book, or slept in sheets fresh from the dryer. Sora’s old action figures aren’t played with so much as dismembered in effigy (is it that Vanitas is vindictive or that he’s jealous?), but the new electric toothbrush somehow wins grudging approval. The vacuum cleaner startles him the first time she turns it on, but one night when she goes for a drink at 3am, she discovers he’s been teaching himself to use the TV. Finding out the water can come out of the taps already hot buys her a whole seven minutes of intrigued silence, but the existence of ice cube trays might as well be a mortal offense. (”Don’t tell me you people actually wait for the water to--?” Given that he then summons a block of ice longer than the dining room table out of thin air, she thinks on this occasion he might be right though when he leaves said ice block to melt, her charitable feelings dry up.) He has to watch her pick herbs from the garden and cook with them before he can be convinced that the “weeds” are food. In short, he’s barely half way back from feral, and if the man who made him wasn’t already dead, she’d happily go kill that piece of shit herself.

It turns out, with spit, polish, and proper motivation (read as: bribes, read as: hot pot and honey castella), he’ll do the things she asks (sometimes). When he actually commits himself to a task, he’s focused to an alarming degree, meticulous and self-critical, and he stubbornly refuses to give up until he’s content with the results, which means that sometimes on her way to work she finds him where she left him the night before, still glaring, bleary-eyed and bratty, at the broken stand-mixer or mantle clock or book spine that she hoped he could fix with magic. If he spitefully tracks mud all over the house after he relentlessly weeds the whole garden, well, she’d say the benefits still outweigh the costs.

The hoard of creatures that follow him around (”They’re my feelings,” he says, and kicks one without the slightest hesitation) take getting used to, but it’s easier to share space when they make themselves so useful--sometimes even when he can’t be badgered into work, he’s willing the boss the underlings into action: the crooked door on the backyard shed finally gets rehung thanks to a towering brute with a banana peel on its head, and once she opens a jar in the kitchen she doesn’t remember buying and finds it full of rich, warm apple pie.

He gets... better. It’s not linear. They have bad days, days when he breaks things without warning and won’t talk except through stinging barbs, one day so bad he let a flock of his worst feelings pound enormous holes in the living room walls, burns up her favorite rose bush--but they have good days too. Some days he laughs and it isn’t malicious at all; some days he eats with her at the table without even being asked; some days she comes home late to find he’s still awake, ready to poke fun at the tired way she toes off her shoes, and it takes everything she has to keep from saying You really didn’t have to wait up for me.

One day he smiles for no reason at all, and she thinks: The boy’s going to be okay.

(But how in the world is she going to explain all this to Sora?)

And there’s sooo much else I want to write but I can’ttttttt, I don’t have time, so here’s a bullet list of “also featuring:”

Vanitas being a natural Heartless deterrent because none of them want to mess with the biggest Darkness on the block.

Ven, Terra, and Aqua sniffing around trying to figure out whether they need to take Vanitas back (just to make sure he’s properly under watch, of course); Sora’s mom giving them the politest “Fuck you” this side of the universe.

Kairi and Vanitas friendship. Vanitas doesn’t even know it’s happening. Kairi is devious. Vanitas taking over Kairi’s training even though they can’t physically spar because they’ll literally end the world if they fight lol. Kairi taking advantage of Vanitas’ lack of interest in social cues to get him to do things none of the other boys will do with her like clothes shopping.

Kairi and Axel friendship with Roxas being the weird middle man who doesn’t know why they can’t just text each other instead of sending handwritten letters back and forth through him of all people.

Vanitas and Roxas reaching grudging levels of respect because sarcastic bitches gotta support each other.

Roxas and Sora’s mom being hilariously awkward because Sora’s mom doesn’t know if she should also be claiming responsibility for this child too and Roxas is absolutely clueless about the concept of having parents in the first place.

After many chapters of redemption arc, Sora’s mom taking Vanitas with her to work at the hospital so he can turn the sick children’s negative feelings into Unversed and then defeat them. She doesn’t know this hurts him and he sure as fuck isn’t going to tell her.

Everything going to shit when Chirithy shows up, insisting Vanitas is its master and calling him “Ven.” Vanitas was getting better--he was getting over the fact that he’d never be “Ventus” again--

Discovering memories of Daybreak Town and the first Keyblade War with Chirithy’s (and Namine’s!) help. Remembering the existence of old friends--Ephemer, Skuld, the other Union leaders--and the realization that they might still be alive, trapped in a timeless world of sleep.

Vanitas and Riku teaming up after someone (Mickey? Yen Sid?) suggests that Sora’s heart may have returned to the place where all hearts eventually go--the core of light that lies sleeping in the deepest depths of the realm of Darkness. Realm of Darkness road trip! (This is just my excuse to wax philosophical about how being made of Darkness doesn’t actually make anyone evil.)

Finding out that saving Sora will mean finally, actually opening the door to the true Kingdom Hearts, which can only be accessed via Scala Ad Caelum, or, more specifically, the ruins of Daybreak Town that lie beneath it.

Insert some Nomura-esque convoluted plot here about how the clock of Daybreak Town isn’t actually a bell tower but the mechanism for protecting the original X-blade and the door to Kingdom Hearts, and Daybreak!Ventus’ very existence was somehow tied to this clock tower--that’s why Ventus’ and Vanitas’ Keyblades form the two halves of a broken gear: they’re maybe literally the gear that turns the hands of time in the world that once lay closest to the heart of all things. The bell, the sword, the door--they’re all linked, and the only way to save Sora--to save everyone, including the sleeping Dandelions--is to reunite (to wake) their fractured dream of Daybreak with reality, restore the X-blade, and retrieve Sora’s wandering self with the power of Kingdom Hearts’ connection to all worlds and all hearts.

In short, like Nomura, I don’t actually know how I’d ever make it make sense, but the X-blade would get forged by Ven and Vanitas in a safe and sane way (this is just my excuse to give Vanitas a scene where he finally recognizes that he is content to be a separate being from Ventus; that he wants to stay his own person)... Kairi wields the X-blade because fuck you KH3, and everyone gets the damn happy ending they deserve--but most especially Vanitas, who gets to be the big damn hero to finally bring Sora home safe to their mother.

Like guys, I just need Vanitas’ narrative arc to feel coherent and complete. I need to know why he and Ven have a gear motif. How they’re connected to the Dandelions. Whether or not Ventus and Vanitas could ever both simultaneously be at peace despite remaining separate people. Whether Chirithy would have recognized Vanitas. Why Ventus alone had the power to forge the X-blade by reuniting with his other half when it would otherwise have taken 13 Darknesses and 7 Lights. What Sora’s mother would say finding out her son has like five clones now. If anyone would ever recognize that Vanitas had never been shown basic fucking human kindness.

Nomura. Plz.

[clown-bait]

A Very Monster Christmas (Monster Roommate AU) PT6

Ok so this is the final chapter for part 2 but obviously theres a long way to go. I consider this the middle part of this whole story. Part 3 will be out later this week so look forward to that folks!

CH 23 Santa Baby

“Another successful French exit!” Leech sighed happily shutting her curtains from the blizzard that had begun outside. She jumped from her bed when a gloved hand tapped her shoulder.

“Pennywise?” her ears perked up.

“Probably not the one you're thinking of.” a gruff voice answered her.

“Oh uh hey pops.” Leech said shuffling uncomfortably.

“No need for the nerves Fangs you're family now.” Uncle Penny chuckled almost gently. He handed her a glass of warm red liquid that wide red smile making his eyes twinkle. The vampire cautiously sipped from the glass.

“Thanks? What’s the catch here?”

“No catch, you gotta put on some meat for the little ankle biters.” The older clown smirked patting her shoulder.  “Speaking of the brats can I say hello?”

“I’m pretty sure its only been like three weeks don’t think there's much there to talk to.” leech finished her beverage quickly licking the glass clean as she watched her in-law approach her.

“And I’m pretty sure this will go by a lot faster than normal Fangs.”

“Has something like this ever happened before?” Leech asked pulling up her shirt to watch her insides glow.

“I had tried it with a human once while Junior slept, self preservation attempt.” he grimaced a bit at the memory. “The host didn't last long enough…” the older clown paused when the savory flavor of fear drifted into his large red nose. “Don't worry Fangs, I think you have a much better chance at it.” Uncle Penny placed a gloved hand over her skin and made a similar trill to his younger counterpart his being deeper with a jazz like flair. The lights within her flashed rapidly like lightning in a bottle. After an awkward moment of silence he burst out laughing. “Oh man those are Junior’s kids all right!! Violent little brats!”

“Great, do any of them take after me?”

“Yeah the extremely vicious ones.” Uncle Penny started to laugh again at his own joke.

“Oh come on! I’m not that bad!” the vampire huffed pulling down her shirt and going back to licking the cup clean.

“Oh trust me Peachy you're bad.” Pennywise Junior stood in the doorway and smirked.  

“You like it though.” Leech beamed reaching for him to join her.

“You are very right my dear. I love it.” he grinned back leaning down to nuzzle his nose against hers. “I missed you.” he whispered warmly. The elder clown rolled his eyes.

“Get a room ya heathen.”

“I'm in it, you however are welcome to leave at any time.” the younger Pennywise cocked an eyebrow at his older self as he pulled his mate’s legs over his own. His uncle made a face and left to rejoin the other murderers downstairs shutting the door with him. “I’ll tell your mom you weren't feelin’ good. Don't bounce my grandkids around too much Junior.”

“Oh my god leave.” Leech groaned as her mate cackled his bells bouncing with him.“What’s put you in such a good mood?” the vampire asked as her hands found their way into Penny’s ruffles.

“Your mother fed me more cookies!” he purred. “She also wants you to wear this hat.” her clown pulled a santa hat over her bald head then grabbed the little puff ball on the end to play with.

“Wow you are easy to please.” Leech chuckled.

“Come, I wish to see Krueger beaten into submission by your video gaming before he leaves.”

“Maybe later Pen I want to be alone for a bit.” Leech mumbled and then grew silent again. Penny sniffed the air and roughly cupped her cheeks “Talk.”

“Am I really that easy to read?”

“Like a book.”

“Well since there's no hiding it. I'm overwhelmed.” she sighed and rested her head on her clown’s warm chest. “All this, the pregnancy, my mom, Mike Hanlon, finding out I'm a useless bargaining token. Did I tell you I still can’t influence minds without bleeding all over the place? Talk about a blow to my self esteem.”

“Peachy” her clown removed her from his lap and rose to his feet pulling her up to stand equal with him. “Do you know why I bonded myself to you?”

“You have an insatiable thirst for undead pussy?”

“Other than that.”

“I'm at a loss.”

“Because you are incredibly stubborn.”

“I can't tell if that's a compliment or not.”

“In all my time here you are the only thing I have met with enough fight to bare my offspring. Anyone of lesser will would not survive, you were made for me my love.”  

“You could've just you like your women high strung.” Leech laughed to herself and hugged her clown tight. She couldn't tell if it was from the hormones or just the feeling of hugging him that made tears well up in her eyes and she quickly buried her face to hide it as feelings came out in waves. “Shit. Now you've gone and made me cry.”

“It was not meant to insult-“

“I love you. Stop talking.”

“No.” he hummed petting the soft hat on her cold head. “I brought the plant with me!”

“The what?”

“The kissing plant the one you hang up?”

“Mistletoe?”

“Yess!” the clown bounced excitedly pulling said plant out from seemingly nowhere “I want to use it! That is what one does with their mate on this day yes?” he stared at her eagerly as he worked at fastening it to the ceiling.

“Move it over the bed.” Leech tugged at him a bit till his unnaturally long arm was over her mattress. “Perfect. Get over here baby daddy.” she giggled through her sharp buck teeth. Pennywise joined her with a trademark cackle that trailed off as he pulled her close cupping her cheeks in his large hands.

“What about our guests darling?”

“Fuck em. Party’s over anyway, we’ll just say I was having an emotional hormone breakdown or some BS.”

Pennywise made an amused rumble and brought his lips just out of reach of hers stopping to take in her scent. He shut his eyes and inhaled deep as thick sweet smells assaulted his senses. “I love you too little hunter.” he growled out seconds before smashing his lips into hers. Leech could feel the heat of his warm plump lips engulfing hers that were extra cold in the winter air. His embrace was heated as his talons pressed into skin and fangs sloppily dragged against lips.  

“You know” Leech panted between furious kisses “Mistletoe is a parasite.” Pennywise shoved his mate backwards onto her bed and crawled on top of her pinning her body with his massive form. His lips latched back onto her nipping at the soft flesh with his teeth while grinding his squirming erection down against her hips. He pulled off panting and still dry humping her making a goofy smirk in realization “Like our children!” he giggled.

“Oh my god you can't call them parasites” Leech laughed and gasped as Penny licked and kissed his way to her waistband dragging his long fingers over her stomach. “NO! OH GOD THAT TICKLES NO!” she shrieked and jolted as his claws ghosted over her skin. The clown’s eyes lit up like the twinkling lights that decorated the houses outside.

“Does it now? Maybe Pennywise should punish you for being so naughty this year hmm?”

“Oh no! NO PENNY!” Leech squealed as her clown started his assault laughing with her and getting lost in the moment. Deadly talons meant to slice throats sheathed themselves replaced with soft gloved fingers that danced ever so gently over her skin as she giggled and thrashed.

“Naughty, Naughty, Naughty!” he chanted as continued to attack her. Leech tried to grab his arms to stop him but Penny snarled grabbing her shirt and pulling it up off her head in one swift motion leaving it on her wrists as a makeshift restraint. He smirked in her face as he held her arms up brining his free hand back over her body. The clown bowed his head down and for the first time noticed the red lingerie she had hidden from him underneath her baggy pajamas. Pennywise sat as still as a statue until he a low rumble dripping with lust rattled from his throat. The eldritch’s claws ran up her sides in a much less playful way, all the way up till each cupped an entire breast and the creature loomed over his mate with an absolutely feral look in his eyes. “NaUghTy.” he hissed his voice baritone and distorted and Leech swore she saw steam leave his lips..

“Merry Christmas Ruffles.” Leech smirked her long front fangs shining in the moonlight.

The clown growled and manhandled her up till she was sitting on his lap his costume melting away into a more “holiday appropriate" one complete with a santa hat of his own. Leech impatiently pushed open his cherry red coat feeling his steel muscles underneath only to have her throat harshly grabbed and fangs graze her ear. Pennywise squeezed her neck tighter as he moved his nose and fang filled lips over the skin on her face hissing and inhaling her adrenaline filled scent. “Tell me naughty girl what’s your name.” he snarled pulling her face against him by her jaw. Of course he'd want to make this into some perverted Santa role play. Leech smiled nervously as her breathing labored under his iron grip.

“L-Lee-“

“Not tonight.” he snapped at her forcing her to look him in the eye. “Tonight you are Fuck Meat. understand?”

leech squirmed and panted “Holy shit penny…” in an instant Pennywise cut off her air and yanked her back against him.

“UNDERSTAND?!” he nearly roared and Leech prayed no one downstairs noticed the loud eldritch noises coming from her room. He eased his grip on her throat slightly letting air back into her lungs and she gasped out her answer.

“Y-y-yes sir!”

“That’s better my little toy, much better. Do you want to tell Ol’ Pennywise what you want for Christmas Fuck Meat?

“Well sir I was really hoping for a nice long candy cane.” Leech smiled and reached for his belt buckle. Penny wrenched her hand away and held it right below his jaws.

“Ohhh but you've been such a naughty girl Fuck Meat. Naughty girls don't get treats.” he growled and unsnapped her bra  “Do you know what naughty girls get?” Penny practically purred returning his grip to her neck just a little bit tighter than last time.

Leech shook her head in his grasp and penny moved her hand to his buckle guiding her to undo it.

“A thick piece of coal.” he hissed as something very large and very different sprung free. It was thick and the color of charcoal, a bit of precum beaded at the top and ran down its ridges. Leech swallowed hard at the sight of it.

“Merry Christmas.” he all but snarled into her ear as he guided her hand to touch what Leech would describe as the evilest cock she'd ever seen. The organ was strangely warm and slimy exactly what one would expect from an eldritch horror. It throbbed as she stroked him and Penny groaned when her nails trailed up the sensitive ridges.

“Yeeesss” he hissed forcing her head down to stare at his demonic cock. “Look how good you're making your Penny feel, it leaks for you.” Pennywise brought his hand to her bare breast pinching and twisting one of her nipples grinning wickedly when she moaned for him. “Need to get you nice and wet my little fuck meat.” he whispered removing her hands from him and laying her down. “Wouldn't want the little ones to get hurt.” he smirked at her as he removed her panties with his teeth licking his way back up her inner thigh. He licked a stripe up her pussy and then probed her entrance lubricating her with his massive amounts of drool. Leech gripped his arm and gave him a sharp squeeze and a pair of amber eyes flicked up from between her legs.

“Be careful ok?”

The clown broke character for a brief moment moving up his mate to kiss her cheek in reassurance “They are half me and half you. I promise they will be safe.” Leech turned her nose into him smiling and tracing her fingers over his cheekbones.

“Ok…ok you can continue.”

Pennywise growled and pulled her wrists up over her head. “That's not the game we’re playing tonight.” a pair of shadowy tentacles slithered out from the teeth at the base of his cock wrapping around Leech’s legs to hold them apart.

“Tell me again nicely, what do you want for christmas Fuck Meat.”

“You.” she panted “I want you.”

“You want me to what?” Penny grinned wickedly and ground himself in the slimy slick folds of his mate’s pussy.

“P-Penny.” Leech sputtered as the ridges of his cock grazed over her clit

“Tell me Fuck Meat!” he spat stopping his movements and resting his head at her entrance.

“P-Please Pennywise. Please I want you to fuck me.”

Pennywise let out a shaky growl and sent his hips slowly forward, Leech cried out as he parted her lips. Inch after horrible inch sank into her in what felt like slow motion. His bumps and ridges dragged along her inner walls and Leech could only imagine what they'd feel like once he started thrusting. Pennywise’s eyes had rolled back and his goblin shark mouth grew out of his lips in a silent scream. She was so perfectly fitted around his new cock and molten hot drool dripped from his gums onto his mate’s chest like candle wax.  

When he finally regained composure and started to move it took Leech everything she had not to let out a loud moan instead turning her head and biting down onto her comforter. She could feel the slow and steady drag of Pennywise’s cock against her walls and her legs wrapping tightly around him pulling his hips in to hit deeper. Penny let out a deep groan and snapped his hips harder arching his cock in a way that hit her in all the right spots. He knew her body like the back of his own hand and could make her scream if he wanted to. Penny gave his mate a few more test pumps then with a snap of his fingers removed his costume which cindered off of his skin feeling like static around Leech’s legs. He moved to lay on top of her his warm skin covered her cool flesh like an electric blanket as he began to hump into her at a steady rhythm. One of his claws gored into her thigh the other ripped into the mattress as steam left his lips in a breathy growl. Leech moved her own set of talons up his lean biceps then to his shoulders feeling the raw dormant power contained within the form he wore. The creature under the clown skin churred with delight as she panted out his name like a prayer. It didn't matter what form he took her as she loved IT wholly and completely and those three magic words they rarely said to one another came spilling out of her lips as his speed increased.

“Penny!” she found herself whining “Penny, I love you! Oh god I love you, I love you!” she couldn't control her babbling and involuntarily dug her claws into the marble white flesh of his back. Her clown let out a primordial roar fangs extending forward thrusts hard and feral. “Say it again love. Praise me!” he demanded losing himself to his mate’s body as he rutted into her with his new cock. He shifted it again inside her wanting to see what different sensations he could feel as his cock head flared open slightly to stretch her walls. Leech yelped at the change and Penny smiled wickedly into her skin his hot breath washing over her in waves as his speed increased again. “Mmmmmm take it Fuck Meat! Penny’s little cocksleeve! Yeesss take all of me! Take it, take it take iT!” he babbled until his language was nothing more than slurred almost-words amongst the churrs and growls. Sensory overload began to blur the vampire’s vision and she struggled to find the words until they burst out of her lungs in gasps “FUCK Pennywise I'm close, I'm fucking close! Please!” she begged him bringing him out of his trance and finally one of his hands moved off her breasts to that sensitive little bundle of nerves between her legs. Leech gasped at the contact arching her hips and pushing back into him her face straining and cracking from the pressure of holding back. “Go on my love, cum for me! Cum for your Penny. Cum cum cum!” Pennywise somehow managed to rasp out desperate to feel her squeeze and spasm around him. When she came Leech felt as if a meteor had just crashed and exploded in her body which seized tight around her clown. Pennywise’s eyes rolled back from the sensation, teeth extended forward as he grabbed her neck in his jaws holding her in place while he met his own release. His love growls rumbled through his body as Leech twitched with aftershocks till his cock stilled its pumping of floating seed into her.

The vampire somehow found her arms and wrapped them around her mate who still held her in his jaws petting his matted hair was about all she could do. Finally after what seemed like a thousand years teeth retracted from her skin and Pennywise pulled out, a trail of opal liquid floating around their bodies from where they conected.

“Holy fuck.” Leech panted as the clown collapsed with a grunt.

The eldritch groaned and yanked a blanket on top of him. turning away from his mates gaze.

“At the end there..it was almost like you were…..Pen was that your version of love making?”

The clown made an inhuman moo-like growl tucking his long limbs in as he flopped over onto his side. he refused to look at her and buried his face in the blanket letting out a low dangerous hiss.

“Look big guy I know you don't like talking about your feelings but its ok alright? I loved it and I love you. Also I'm fucking freezing give me some of that blanket.”

A pair of golden eyes flicked open then his arm lifted the comforter up like a cloak allowing Leech to slip under it and fit herself against him. She had never felt his naked clown form like this outside of sex his body was so smooth and abnormally warm. She liked the feeling and pressed herself into him more hoping he wouldn't pull away.

“How are the kids?” she asked bringing his hand down to her belly desperate to hear him say something. Finally he moved tracing his fingers lightly over her stomach then pressing his warm palm over her womb.

“Happy. You are happy so are they.”

“That’s cause their daddy knows how to make me smile.” Leech turned over and beamed up at her clown.

“Merry Christmas Peachy.” he finally grinned through cherry red lips and bunny teeth.

Leech leaned up and kissed the tip of his nose “Merry Christmas to you too Pennywise.”

The vampire buried her face in the crook of the eldritch’s neck letting his deep rumbling purrs and smells of chocolate and peppermint lull her into comfort. And forever safe in the arms of her boogie man, the queen of Derry finally fell into a deep warm sleep.

-------------------------------------

YEAH MIDDLE PART IS DONE WOOH! The good news is I have basically 4 chapters of the next part of this story already written so the waits wont be so long until I get caught up to the start of IT Ch2 then obviously Im gonna wait to see how that plays out. So yay for me finishing things for once!

[shimmershaewrites]

Waltzing's for Dreamers, Chapter 4 (a Walking Dead story, Caryl AU).

Title:  Waltzing's for Dreamers

Rating:  Hmm.  Maybe PG-13?

Warnings:  Adult language. 

Characters/Pairings:  Daryl Dixon, Dwight, Axel, Oscar, Big Tiny, mention of the Morales family, mention of Sherry, Merle Dixon, mention of Carol Peletier and Sophia Peletier, and a couple of other little Easter eggs for those of you paying attention, lol. 

 Don't mind me.  Just having some fun remixing these characters.

 Sorry about the delay in posting this chapter.  Work kicked my ass and took some names this week and it took me all day yesterday to pull said ass out of my all-consuming exhaustion.  Hence, I'm posting today instead of yesterday when I really wanted to. 

 Anyway.  I hope you enjoyed this chapter.  Off to work on the next one.  Fingers crossed I get it finished in time to post later tonight. 

   Waltzing’s for Dreamers

    More than six years after Vegas.  Early Summer. 

      “90 degrees in the fuckin’ shade out there,” Dwight mumbles around his nub of a cigarette. 

  Beneath the hood of the Morales’ Suzuki, Daryl inwardly sneers.  I’ll match the sweat rings around your scrawny neck and raise you a couple of stank-ass armpit rings, Asshole.  The words never leave his lips, though.  All he gifts the sonofabitch with is a noncommittal grunt.  In the interest of keeping things civil, of course.  Axel’s okay by him, handed over the keys to this Bakersfield shithole like it weren’t nothing and gave him and Merle a chance to start over when they’d up and moved themselves clear across the country trying to outrun the demons of both their pasts.  The man’s harmless, not much left knocking around in his pharmaceutical soaked brain, but his piece of shit cousin is another story altogether, and it’s really too bad they have to keep pretending to coexist peacefully because Daryl can’t really put his finger on it but something about the guy makes his skin crawl.  Oscar’s too, apparently. 

  “Man, put your shirt back on.  You lookin’ like some starved feral ass cat.” 

  Big Tiny stops swaying with the oscillating fan in the corner of garage only long enough to snicker an agreement.  “Oscar ain’t wrong.” 

  “Probably is,” Axel puts in his two cents, his handlebar mustache twitching with each word.  “Starved,” he elaborates, as if anybody had any lingering doubts.  “Sherry don’t like to cook.  Can’t say as I blame her considerin’ she only sees daylight from the inside of that diner.  Poor woman,” he shakes his head.  “Works her pretty little fingers to the bone.” 

  “Might be you should take some pointers from her,” Oscar suggests dryly.  “That wagon ain’t gonna up and fix itself and the way I remember it, those two flower children be thinking they’re getting it back first thing tomorrow.”   

  “Might be,” Dwight spits as he jerks his arms back through his dingy, oil stained shirt, “you can mind your own goddamn business for once.”  He skulks back to his designated corner of the shop, grumbling beneath his breath with every step. 

  “What bug done crawled right up his skinny ass?” 

  The question is drawled right into his ear, and Daryl nearly jumps out of his skin.  Swears and rubs at the bump he can already feel forming on the back of his head.  Slams the hood of the Suzuki shut and scowls at his brother, who brandishes a popsicle in his hand like it’s some kind of sword.  Or a peace offering of sorts.  “What the hell?” Daryl growls, snatching the damn thing and ripping the wrapper impatiently.  “How ‘bout a fuckin’ warning next time?”   

  “Used to be, you didn’t need no warning,” Merle pointedly reminds him, sucking his own orange popsicle back between his lips as only he could, in a manner bordering on the obscene. 

  “Got any more of those?” Big Tiny asks longingly. 

  “Why?” Merle leers with a wink.  “Ole Merle makin’ you hot?”  

  Flustered, Big Tiny groans.  “You nasty.  Anybody ever tell you that?” 

  “See now,” Merle trots out his trademark coat hanger grin.  “That’s all a matter of opinion.  The ladies don’t seem to think so.  In fact…”

  Before he can go any further, Oscar interrupts him, “Little E on deck.” 

  It’s not a moment too soon, and Daryl’s grateful for the reprieve.  His brother might have come a long way, kicked his own drug habit and put his life in some sort of order.  All thanks to a little rude awakening and the kid that’s joined them, bearing a whole box of sweating popsicles like a gift from the Man Upstairs on this sweltering summer day.  But the one thing he ain’t cleaned up is his mouth, especially when it comes to women and his supposed prowess with them.  And he’s far from the only one in this establishment could grow weeds out of his mouth with as filthy as it is, Daryl’s own included.  He gives Oscar a subtle nod of gratitude and leans against the Samurai’s bumper, takes in the scene with an air of wistfulness he couldn’t shake if he wanted to, and damn.  Does he want to. 

  Big Tiny relinquishes his primo spot in front of the fan to lumber over to arguably one of his favorite people—and not just at the moment.  “Got one of those for me, Angel-face?”

  “Grape?” 

  “There any other kind?” 

  Daryl smirks.  Watching when his niece presents the big man with his preferred flavor popsicle and he bows clumsily at the waist in thanks, getting himself a coat hanger grin in response that’s undeniably reminiscent of the one his brother wears much more often these days, although the kid’s is much harder won.  The irony don’t escape him.  Couldn’t if it wanted to.  If somebody’d told him have a dozen years ago Merle would find his happiness just as Daryl’s own life went to absolute shit, he’d have accused them of bald-face lying.  That’s what he would have done.    He don’t begrudge him, though, because God and the Devil both know.  If circumstances were different, if he weren’t such a no-good fuck-up not worth the heartache he knows he’s done caused Carol and her little girl, well.  He don’t resent his brother a moment.  Not at all. 

  “Thank you kindly, Little Miss,” Axel charms as he receives his own popsicle.  “Need me some of them there boots you’re wearing,” he says, openly admiring the black combat boots that are about the biggest things on the eleven-year-old’s ever-growing feet. 

  “Them’s ass kickers,” Merle crows proudly.  “For my ass-kicking girl.” 

  Daryl huffs out a laugh and crumples up his wrapper when his brother’s version of praise earns him a sassy purple tinged tongue, tosses it in the general vicinity of the trash can.   

  “Still like ‘em,” Axel shrugs his skinny shoulders.  “Might even go find me some.” 

  Oscar’s lips twitch before breaking into a grin full of shark-like teeth.  “Man, you couldn’t even kick your own ass.” 

  “Might be you’re right,” Axel agrees amiably.  “Just sayin’, though.  Them’s some mighty fine boots.” 

  “Yes, Ma’am, they are,” Big Tiny chimes in.  Holding out his mammoth paw, he bashfully bargains, “If I show you the car your uncle’s been working on, you think there might be another grape popsicle in it for me?”

  “All that’s left is cherry.” 

  “Cherry just happens to be my second favorite,” Big Tiny tells her as his palm all but swallows up her small hand.  “It’s a ’67 Impala.  Like the one in that show you like so much with the brothers.  He’s fixing it up for the coach at the high school.  Be glad you haven’t met him, Angel-face.  Man loves to hear himself talk.” 

  “You look at that,” Merle remarks as the unlikely pair disappear into the back of the garage, Oscar and Axel trailing not far behind them.  “Girl’s got him wrapped around her little finger.” 

  “Ain’t the only one,” Daryl points out as he bends to retrieve the garbage that’d fallen just short of its mark and drops it into the can.  “Reckon you’re going to be lost without her when her and her mama move to Jacksonville come the end of July.” 

  “About that, Baby Brother.” 

  Merle scratches absently at the prosthetic on his right arm in a gesture that makes Daryl straighten and study him with a more critical eye.  “Merle.” 

  “I should have told you a long time ago.” 

  “Told me what?” 

  “When that girl leaves?  I’m going with her.  And I want you to come with me.  It’s high time, Boy.  High time.” 

[geth-consensus]

I was hit with inspiration for a completely off the wall type of short story today. I just had to write it.

Club Smackdown

Rain poured down hard on the city. But the neon glow illuminated it, defending it from the darkness of the night. From her perch on the rooftop she rested on one knee watching the crowds swarming the high class club on the other side of the street. "Vermin" she muttered to herself. She could see even from up here the poorly disguised guards placed strategically throughout the crowd. "Heh. And there are the rats among the mice, time to make myself some Swiss cheese" "Stay focused idiot. You're not here to kill the fucking lackies, you're here to take out the big cheese." the voice in ear piece said to her. "Hey! The rat thing was my pun! Get your own fucking material!" she said furiously back into the piece. The voice simply scoffed in response with a "whatever" thrown in for good measure and went silent. She sat there for a minute longer gauging the situation before asking "You're positive he's in there?" "Couldn't be more sure of it. The club only has this much security when he's in." "So I can expect a hell of a lot more rats inside then huh?" "I'd be willing to bet on it sweetheart." Her lips parted in a feral grin. "Perrrrrfect" she purred. She stood up and drew her dual blades out. She leaned over the side and looked directly down at the pavement beneath her. One very obvious rat stood there, trying to be discrete in the shadows, keeping an eye out for trouble was he? Well then he was looking the long way she thought to herself as she stepped off the ledge and dropped from the rooftop.

Another pissant day he thought to himself, why the fuck was he assigned to stand guard out here in the rain. What the hell were they guarding against anyway? He didn't care. What he did care about was the fact the crowd kept bustling him around and was starting to make him agitated. He really could do with shooting something right about now...

The sudden wail of a high pitched scream from across the street turned his head along with everyone else, the boy stationed as lookout was gone, where he had been now stood a gorgeous blonde women. She was draped in blood. His eye caught something at her feet, it was what was left of the boy, who she had apparently cleaved clean in two as both halves lay on either side of her. 'Good' he thought with a smile, finally something to shoot at.

She didn't wait for them to react, charging forward absurdly quickly she slit the neck of a stunned guard, then another, and another. By the time the fourth one fell the others had finally regained enough sense to pull out there weapons and start shooting at her, paying no heed to the crowd of people who were all screaming and running around, all of which were clambering over one another to escape the blood bath. "HEY DUMBASS! EVER HEARD OF KEEPING IT DISCRETE!" the voice in her ear roared. "EVER HEARD OF SHUTTING THE FUCK UP!" she yelled back, slitting another three rats into giblets as she did so. Weaving between the bullets of morons who couldn't shoot for shit was too easy, boring almost.  They may as well have just been shooting the sky for all the good it would do them. She needed to jazz this up a bit, something with a little more flare was needed. Spinning the blade in her right arm around it wreathed itself in white flames and came back to rest as a silver shotgun. "Ahhh, Petal. That look is gorgeous on you" she purred to it. The gun vibrated in her hand, revelling in the delight of that fact. She raised it and took aim at the nearest cheese muncher, she pulled the trigger. White flames burst from the end with no discernible projectile. But that didn't stop the rats head blasting off its shoulders. "Nice!" she said. "Hey Thorn! You want in on this action!" The black blade in her other hand shivered as well in glee. A quick twirl later and she was now dual wielding twin death. "Real subtle..." the voice in her ear said with expatriation. "Subtlety never won any style awards honey." she said with a grin. She continued to make mince meat of the frankly pathetic security detail until the street was at last quiet, the rats inside must have had the much wiser idea of staying away from the magical gun toting maniac.

Placing Petal over her shoulder she walked over to the iron door that had been slammed closed over the main door and knocked on it with Thorn. "Yo assholes, open up. We can do this the easy way or the hard way, but either way I'll be getting in there!" After a few moments it was clear she was not going to be getting a response. She sighed. "Now what genius," the voice cooed in her ear, "going to blast your way through solid metal?" "What now?" she replied. "Now we do things the hard way. Which just so happens to be my favourite way." she said with a smile of true glee written upon her face.

They stacked every bit of furnishing they could against the door and stacked up behind improvised barricades in a wide semi circle around the front door. He was panting hard, he had just managed to flee inside before they had slammed the door shut. That psycho bitch was insane, she had slaughtered a legion of men without breaking a sweat! But they were safe now! There was no way she could get through seven inches of reinforced steel!

The ground beneath them shook slightly as though a large vehicle was driving by and then stopped suddenly. They sat there watching the door, wondering what the hell that could mean. Suddenly a man popped out from a side room yelling "RUN! GET OUT-"

Whatever else he had to say would never be heard as the front of the building exploded inward as the gas truck the crazed blondie had acquired detonated. Those near the front were vaporised instantly, one unfortunate soul was splattered against the far wall behind the steel door, which to its credit had only slightly crumpled under the blast.

The survivors were still picking themselves up when, as they looked towards the blazing inferno of what had been the buildings front, they saw the silhouette of a figure standing there, a shotgun draped over her shoulder and the other hanging loose by her side. "Told you fuckers I'd be coming in." the women cooed.

"You're absolutely insane. You know that right?" the voice said.

"Bitch probably! But you can't have this much fun when if you have it all together!" she exclaimed while turning rats into corpses. They folded before her like wet tissue paper, it wasn't really even that much fun she thought sadly, even the shotguns couldn't make killing them interesting. "Why don't you try bare handed then?" the voice asked.

"And deny Petal & Thorn the joy of killing them? I couldn't do that to them!" she said incredulously. The voice simply sighed in response. "Just tell me how much further till I reach the dickshit alright."

"Well from what I can recall it's just passed the main casino floor, office at the back of it is usual hold out." the voice said.

"Hold the fuck up I thought this was a club! What kind of club has a casino floor!?" the blondie said like it was the most ridiculous thing in the world.

"Apparently this kind. Just keep it focused dipshit. Reach him, kill him, then contemplate why the club has a casino."

"Fuck off bitch! I can multitask!" Blondie yelled back. She blasted her way onto the overview of the casino floor, kicking the rat in front of her through the balustrade and down onto a roulette table. She gazed down to see at least fifty guns pointed back at her. "Fuck this" she said spinning Thorn a rocket launcher and Petal into a flamethrower. Blood, flames and guts rained down on everything for a solid five minutes until at last Blondie was the last one standing atop a toppled slot machine.

"You know those weapons of your are really not very sporting, I believe the kids call it OP?" the voice said in her ear.

"Fuck fair! I'm all about winning bitch!" she said.

"Yeah I know but I-" whatever the voice said Blondie missed as she ducked under the crack of a whip sailing over her head. "Watch out!" the voice cried.

"Yeah no fucking shit dipshit." Blondie said. The whip belonged to a drop dead gorgeous women in a red dress with fiery red hair to match. She stood on top of a snapped roulette table and brandished her whip over her head. "And who the fuck are you?" Blondie said.

"I am your demise!" she said without further elaboration. A full five seconds followed that statement and then Blondie burst out laughing.

"Holy shit! Wow! I've heard some real fucking bad on liners in my time, but you just took first fucking prize bitch!" she said gasping for air. The outburst of laughter had clearly annoyed the red women, who had a vein pulsing in her forehead and her face had contorted into one of fury.

"Ugh, girl. You may want to tone it back a notch." the voice said.

"Or what!" she said as she started to sob laugh, "She's going to bring me to 'bring me to my doom' or some shit." The machine beneath Blondie exploded as the whip cracked it in half sending her crashing to the floor. Still laughing she rolled backward and stood up. "Oh my dear, thank you, I needed a good laugh today. You've really brightened up what was otherwise a rather dreary mission so far."

The ground beneath her detonated in a shower of material as the whip slammed where Blondie should have been, except she wasn't, she was already standing on an adjacent roulette table. "Well darling, thanks for the giggles. But I got someone to kill so let's make this quick shall we."

"Don't you dare underestimate me you harlot! I will destroy you here and-" she stopped mid sentence as Blondie was suddenly right in her face. How the fuck had she done that!? She had been at least 20 feet away not two seconds ago. It was impossible! But that wasn't even the most shocking thing, that was reserved for the full embrace of the harlot's lips pressing on to hers.

A full moment passed as they stood locked in an embrace. Then there was sound of a click beneath her chin as there lips parted. "Pretty good...but I've had better. Thank anyway Red." Then the sound of a shotgun blast was last thing she knew.

"Right can we fucking refocus?" the voice cried in her ear.

"On?" she asked wiping blood of her face.

"You know what idiot! The damned mission!" the voice said.

"Oh yeah! Right! The mission!" she said jumping from the table and walking over to the office door in the back of the casino. Ripping it open she found the room totally empty, except for a gaping great hole that led outside to a back alley. Sticking her head out she heard the screech of tires to her right. She ran down the alley to find a small motorcade of card racing away. "Motherfucker! Running like the punk ass bitch he is!" Blondie yelled.

"Well now what? You aint going to catch him running now are you?" the voice said. Looking across the street she spied a parked motorcycle, she grinned. "You haven't got the keys moron" the voice said.

"I don't need the keys" she said sauntering over to it. Raising Thorn to point at it she said "Start" in the most commanding voice possible. The engine roared to life and she mounted it slinging the guns over her back.

"Words fail me" the voice said with utter exasperation.

"Just role with it loser. Just accept that I'm that fucking good!" Blondie yelled as she reared the bike into a wheelie and raced off down the street after the motorcade.

That damned psycho chick! Twenty years of building an empire gone up in literal flames. Now he was going to have to start over somewhere else, a whole new country was what he needed now. A place to lie low for a while till he could sort all this shit out. His thoughts were interrupted by the flare of an engine somewhere behind them announcing its arrival. "Hey boss. I think that bitch is catching up with us!" the driver said.

"Then do something about it you morons! That's what I pay you for!" he yelled back.

A voice suddenly carried out from behind them, how it could be heard over the roar of the wind or sounds of car and bike engines is a question no one could ever answer. Not that any of those who could have asked it would live long enough to ever give the question much more thought. "Hey fuckos! Just hand over your boss and you can all live ok! I completely totally promise!" it said.

"Heh. She's delusional if she thinks that-" he was cut off her voice again cut over him. "Of course I'm being serious asshole! I always keep my promises!...What? I'm still projecting my voice? Oh...whoops." and the voice promptly went silent again.

She was coming up in the first car fast, the hadn't sopped do she assumed it was going to be the hard way again. She wouldn't have wanted it any other way. Tearing Petal out she blasted the back wheels apart and car began to screech and jerk wildly from side to side. 

Pulling up along side it she blasted the windows out killing whoever was behind them, a quick glance told her what she needed to know. He wasn't in this car. She accelerated away as the car span of to the side and collided with a lamppost in a spectacular crash.

"Come on dickhead. Which one is you" she said looking from car to car ahead of her. There really only was one way to decide it. " Eeny, meeny, miny, moe" she began to sing.

"Fucking really" the voice said in her ear. Blondie ignored it and kept singing. She settled on the car on the far right and raced towards it. But now the cars were responding, windows were rolling down and gun were pointing out of them. 'Hah' she thought. Like those were going to help them. They opened up as she approached the car as she jerked the bike around dodging them.

"Hah!" she yelled, "Like those are going to do anything to help you rats!" Her mirth was cut shirt as a stray bullet struck and burst her front tire. She was jettisoned forward from the seat and into the air. She somersaulted and landed on all fours on top of the car that had been ahead of her. "Fucking assholes" she said standing up and blasting shots into the roof. The car violently veered off towards the lead car ahead of it, as it slipped behind it she leapt on to it's roof and was met with a hail of bullets buzzing up through it.

They fired straight up as he hunkered down in his seat trying to take what cover he could. There was a dull thud from the roof and then the sound of sliding and then silence. Everyone in the car looked behind them, trying to see if they could spot her body. There was a tapping on the front window, they tuned to see her squatting on the hood of the car. "You rats need to work on your aim. Here, let me give you a demonstration on how to." she said levelling her shotguns at them, She pulled the trigger killing the driver and the front passenger instantly.

The car began to spin violently until it's momentum carried it over on to its side. It screeched to a halt in the middle of the highway. A door popped open and a rat started to climb out. Blondie casually sliced his head off as she sat on the side of the vehicle waiting for that to happen. Looking down into the car she was met with the barrel of a gun. "Dodge this!" a voice yelled and the sound of a shot rang out.

Blondie dodged it. Grabbing the gun she pulled upward, lifting it and the diminutive man it belonged too with it. "Ah! At last Mr Gator! I've been trying to make your acquaintance all evening! It's so nice to finally meet you." He barked at that and let go, he started trying to scamper away. "Ah ah ah. I've waited all night for this." she said throwing Thorn at him and impaling him through the gut into the ground.

"You know in someone's else's story they might now have a long heart to heart, or maybe a lengthy monologue about who I am and why I came to kill you. But we both already know why I'm here and why I'm killing you. So I think we can skip that part, don't you?" Blonide said grinning and sauntering over to him.

"Fuck you bitch" he said coughing up blood. "Who the fuck do you think you are!?"

"Who am I? I thought we already established we don't need to discuss that. But if you insist I'll tell you this. The only person I am that matters to you is who I am right now." she said levelling her gun at his head.

"And who the fuck is that then." he said.

"The blonde bitch killing you." She pulled the trigger.